


I'm Not There

by orphan_account



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: :(, Angst, Eventual Smut, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I'm still writing this so I don't know how it's all going to turn out, On Hiatus, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24804934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Two pairs of eyes lock across a moonlit bookshop. The piercing gaze of a woman who wants to love, and the timid glance of a woman who wants to live.In which a book is vandalised, a card is bestowed, and a single unabashed wink marks the beginning of what may well be the end.
Relationships: Carol Aird/Therese Belivet
Comments: 140
Kudos: 247





	1. Koi No Yokan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Bella.

* * *

_Koi no yokan (Japanese) — the feeling of knowing that you will soon fall in love with the person you have just met._

* * *

Therese brushed her fingers against the tabletop as she walked, casting dust up from where it had settled just moments ago. These rows of yellowing paperbacks had become remarkably familiar to her, each worn spine settling as a memory into the archives of her mind. Her phone buzzed once in her pocket, a notification undoubtedly from Dannie wondering where she could be this late in the evening. It was a rarity that she ever came across another soul in the quietude of the bookshop other than the owner himself — especially at this hour — but Therese often caught herself choosing to bask in the joys of solitude rather than reminisce on past memories of the extrovert she had once been. A sliver of moonlight split the darkened store ahead of her, coming to pool on an aged copy of _The Book Thief;_ a novel she’d been meaning to get around to for months now but had failed to ever quite find the time.

A smile ghosted at the corners of her mouth as she tugged it from its place between two other titles she’d most likely end up reading, too; deft fingers slipping the hardback from its sleeve and running themselves over the coarse buckram of the exterior. Behind her, the shop’s suspended bell tinkled once, almost timid in its mellifluence as Therese glanced over her shoulder to regard the newcomer. The door closed with something of a quiet click as two eyes met from across the room, a pair of understated green irises pierced suddenly by their glacial blue counterparts. The strangers each allowed themselves three bold seconds of observance before gazes averted and for a threateningly bleak moment, Therese thought that would be the termination of this whimsical encounter. She drew her eyes back to the volume in her slender hands, tracing each shadowed letter with a tired nail. Her phone vibrated again and this time she took the liberty of pulling it from her pocket; as predicted, Dannie’s name lit up the lock screen.

_You okay?_

Five minutes ago, and then another message which had come through just seconds before.

_Therese?_

The regret was there, of course — she sensed his worry and had to fight the guilt which threatened to rear its head, sliding her thumb across the keyboard in a haphazard reply.

_All good, just at the bookstore._

“Isn’t it ironic?”  
  
Therese flinched, jolted out of her reverie by another voice. Peering up from the blue-tinged illumination of her phone screen, she blinked a few times in gradual adjustment to the near-stygian lighting of the store. The same pair of intimidatingly icy eyes met her inter viam, creased this time in the beginnings of a cautious smile.

“A phone in a bookshop, I mean.”  
  
Did she mean because phones were modern in a way that books weren't? Some wise joke about e-books she couldn't quite grasp? Either way, a nod from Therese. The silent castigation of her gormlessness echoed from somewhere inside her head. Blinking, the younger woman tried to work a coherent sentence out from her dry throat, tapping her left index finger on the copy she held now with a vice-like grip.

“Very.”

 _Very?_ Therese shut her eyes briefly, summoning the courage to try and speak again without making an absolute fool of herself in front of this woman who was the very picture of adult sophistication. She allowed herself a quick sweep of the blonde, praying that in the caliginous lambency of the room, the manner in which her eyes slipped downwards wouldn’t be noticed. Instantly, there was that stifling attraction; this time, directed at the way the stranger dressed. A navy pantsuit clad her figure, flaring out past her knees in such a fashion that one could imagine the entire outfit billowing in non-existent wind. It stretched up to her hips, parting then just above her abdomen in a narrow ‘v’ which laid way to a white blouse. Clocking suddenly the conspicuous number of seconds she had spent unabashedly checking this woman out, Therese drew her gaze back up from her intricately defined collar bones, swallowing once and then twice as she was given a sharp taste of how dry her mouth had suddenly become. The younger woman felt childishly underdressed in her loose denim jacket and a dark dress that must have guarded the confines of her closet for years, now, but it was far better than the sweatpants and _Friends_ shirt she’d been sporting yesterday. Therese didn’t even watch _Friends._

The blonde’s mouth was curled slightly up at its right edge, a smirk playing at her otherwise stoic expression — she _had_ noticed, but Therese was grateful for the lack of reaction it seemed to incite. Instead, she extended a gloved hand, lifting her chin slightly as appeared to be the required posture of a handshake from such a suave woman as this. For a moment, Therese worried about the imminent clamminess of her slightly trembling hands, registering after a beat that the velvet gloves should provide a sufficient barrier between their two palms. She lifted her own arm up to meet the stranger’s, her face forming what she could only hope resembled a smile.

“Carol. Carol Aird.”  
  
_Carol._ The name carried so much irreclaimable weight and yet simultaneously, seemed to roll from _Carol’s_ lips with the insouciance of a dandelion seed in February air, splitting the frost between them with its threatening hopefulness. Therese watched the way Carol’s tongue darted momentarily between her lips at the pronunciation of that final letter, the ‘ _l’_ which she dragged out as if to slip a double-entendre where there was barely even a locatable single-entendre in the first place. Therese exhaled, relieved to finally be able to place a name to that unforgettable face, chiseled as it may have been by Michelangelo himself.

“Therese Belivet.”  
  
Immediately, there was a quiet spark of intrigue that lit itself between Carol’s eyes, her head cocking almost imperceptibly to the left — a move which Therese wouldn’t have caught at all had it not been for the faint shift of the shadows cast across the taller woman’s face. She glanced down at their interlocked hands, noting silently how neither participant in the handshake had opted yet to pull away. With fingers still resting obstinately between them, Carol spoke again.

“Te _rez,_ not The _reese_?”

The inquiry was one that Therese had heard dozens of times prior to this conversation — never like this, though, with the silky over-articulation of that notorious second syllable, the way that Carol seemed to exhale the words that she was speaking, as if talking and breathing were not such different things for her at all. Therese nodded her head curtly, making the move to pull her hand back down to rest at her own side and taking cautious observations of both the disappointed shift in Carol’s demeanour and the immediate rush of deprivation that came with their parting. Carol’s name still echoed around Therese’s head, engraving itself into memories and winding its alluring figure down into her thought processes as inconspicuously as any other word might have done.

“Is Carol an abbreviation for anything? Is it short for any other name?”  
  
Chastising herself at the irrelevant second question, Therese was quickly reminded of the awkwardness she seemed to carry around like a sword, wielding it only in conversations where she actually needed to present herself as something other than a socially inept twenty-three year old. Ignoring the faux pas, Carol allowed herself a smile at last, the warmth spreading like a sunrise across the slopes and valleys of her face.

“I think there was a time where I was destined to be a Carolyn,”

She paused, musing over the idea before discarding it with a bemused quirk of her eyebrows.

“But no, I’m afraid. Carol seems to be all I have to go on.”  
  
Therese relished the sound of her voice, once again letting it flood the stilled air around the two women and feeling its reverberations throughout her own head.

“I think it’s a beautiful name.”

The only coherent string of words she’d uttered for the duration of this entire encounter, and the most sincere, too. Perhaps, if the day had been longer and the sky lighter, Therese would have been able to see the faint blush which coloured Carol’s cheeks — the day, however, was long, the sky dark, and neither could see the sheepish expressions which clouded the other’s face. Carol made a vague gesture at the book Therese was holding, her slender fingers almost skimming against its spine but pulling sharply away when the proximity between two almost-strangers became too close to be anything but intoxicating.

“Have you ever read it before?”

Therese glanced down at the pages, flicking them anxiously between her thumb.

“No, not yet. I don’t usually read books more than once.”  
  
A page, slightly torn by what must have been a previous reader (this was, after all, a second-hand bookshop) caught between Therese’s slightly bitten nail and the motion she had been using to distract them both ceased, giving way instead to a quiet gulp that the younger woman had assumed would be masked by the sound of paper on paper. Carol smiled again, her hand twitching reflexively in what would otherwise have been a move to cup Therese’s cheek in her palm, stilling the obvious discomfort writhing inside her head.  
  
“That’s a lie.”

Carol started slightly, reasonably heedless of such an unexplainable sentence to break such an unexplainable silence. A plucked eyebrow was delicately raised on her behalf, awaiting the rest of Therese’s statement. Clearly fumbling for words in front of Carol, Therese opened her mouth once before closing it again with a small huff, her face a picture of fluster and frustration.

“I do read books more than once, usually, if I enjoy them enough. I don’t really know why I said I didn’t. But I haven’t read _The Book Thief._ That part wasn’t a lie. Have you?”  
  
With a burning passion, Therese hated the way that words were deciding to form in her head tonight, senseless and rambling, as opposed to ordinary days in which she’d at least be able to hold a civilised conversation with another woman. Carol smiled again, her lips curved in what could have been described as a smirk but for the fact that her expression connoted no smugness at all. In fact, Therese noted, she looked considerably earnest for such an elegant woman listening to such a bumbling mess.

“Not yet, no. It’s been recommended a few times, but I prefer to have a reliable approval of any book before I waste my time on a bad novel.”

For a brief moment, Therese paused to wonder what someone with little time to waste was doing in an ailing second-hand bookshop on a Tuesday night at eleven, but that train of thought was quick to vanish as soon as it had made an appearance in her head as Carol leaned conspicuously towards her. Forgetting momentarily what actions one was supposed to carry out in the way of _breathing,_ Therese begged her body not to subconsciously slip from Carol’s berth as the blonde placed a manicured left hand on the counter behind the younger woman. _She smells like thunder,_ Therese remarked, silently, willing herself to stare ahead at a wilted copy of _Never Let Me Go_ rather than at the curved lips of another woman she had known for the best part of five minutes.

“May I?”  
  
Carol breathed the words into the air by Therese’s ear, eliciting a barely-concealable shiver from Therese. With a sharp inhale of realisation, Therese discerned that Carol was talking about the book, rather than any of the other possibilities that she had inadvertently let her mind explore. Nodding stoically, she handed over the tired novel, realising a second too late that four small cavities had been etched into the cover where her nails had been gripping on for dear life. Leaning innocently back, Carol ran her own fingers over the miniature canyons, her smirk this time _full_ of the suggestive smugness she had been reigning in before.

“I suppose you’ll have to buy this now.”  
  
Therese was the one to smile this time, her dimples shadowed in the pale moonlight as Carol watched wordlessly on. _Smile again,_ she wanted to say, as Therese’s expression slipped back into one of amused intrigue. _You’re beautiful._

“I suppose I will.”  
  
Therese turned away from Carol, fishing in her pocket for the spare change she’d rescued from her flat. At the sound of coins rattling against each other, the shop assistant glanced up, his face the perfect summary of such ridiculous hours as these. Sleep clung still to his eyelids, running down his face and pooling above his cheekbones in bags so dark that only the ones Therese had seen under her own eyes put up any competition. He gave a weak smile as the jarring beep of the barcode scanner echoed through the shop, startling Carol out of the trance she’d been in, watching the way Therese moved. Her eyes flickered down first to the coins that Therese was tugging out of her purse, then up to the forlorn expression that she didn’t even bother to hide as she regarded the exhausted boy. He brushed an unkempt few strands of hair out of his eyes, only for it to flop back down again, and again after the second fix-up attempt.

Therese watched on, all too familiar with this agonising routine, of late nights that ended up turning into mornings whether you wanted sleep or not. With a flinch, she reached back into her wallet, sliding two crumpled twenties across the counter as she went to retrieve her two dollar book. The boy looked first at the money and then up at her, his smile broadening into something more genuine as his profits for the night more than doubled in onepayment. _You don’t have that money to give._ Therese brushed off the thought for fear of the clawing guilt that would ensue, wrapping its inescapable tendrils around her legs and rooting her to the ground for days. She refused to slip back into that routine, nodding once in a brief _you’re welcome_ at the incredulous assistant before she turned and strode briskly out of the shop.

After a beat, footsteps found their way into the night behind her, pacing themselves faster than Therese hoped perhaps would be Carol’s normal walking speed.

“Forty dollars,” Carol remarked, an unwanted reminder of the money Therese had thrown away. _Not thrown, given._ Thrown.

Therese twisted around, coming face-to-face with Carol, slightly breathless now with the walk-jogging, simultaneously taken aback by the sudden stop. There was almost a collision before Therese stepped carefully back, leaving the two women close enough still for each to feel the strain of that wanton desire.

“Could you…”  
  
Carol trailed off, visibly unsure about what it was exactly that she would follow with. Therese sensed that this was perhaps the first time Carol had been even remotely flustered in a long while, and an emotion not dissimilar to pride crossed her features briefly before she regained her composure to let Carol continue.

“Could you tell me how _The Book Thief_ goes?”  
  
A quiet triumph filled Therese as she was reminded that Carol only took recommendations from ‘reliable’ peers, tailed rather solemnly by the question of how exactly Therese was going to pull off asking for Carol’s number without sounding as hopelessly infatuated as she worried she might well become. Cutting off Therese’s meek sentence before she could even begin to utter the words, Carol slipped two fingers into the air between them, a pale blue card held deftly in the space where her fingers met.

“Call me.”

Therese gawped.

"If you want to."  
  
And with a wink, Carol Aird turned and sauntered into the thinning crowds of 4th Avenue, as Therese Belivet stood and watched her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are welcome! This is my first work and the only beta reader I have is my own inner critic — if you see any discrepancies or grammatical errors in the writing, feel free to let me know. Also, the Book Thief was my favourite book for about 4 years when I was a kid (replaced rather suddenly by The Price of Salt at the age of 15 ;) so forgive my abundant use of it as a plot point!
> 
> – prestonsarchives


	2. Lagom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for all of the kudos for the last chapter! (And a special note of gratitude to all those who commented; what wonderful things you all had to say.) Also, though I was born in the U.S. and I'm living in New York now, I spent most of my life in south-east Asia, where any English spoken is primarily British-influenced — if you notice me using words like 'sofa' instead of 'couch', or any other mannerisms like that, just pretend they're not there ;)

* * *

_Lagom (Swedish) — not too much and not too little, but just the right amount of anything._

* * *

“Forty dollars?!”

Therese shuffled her feet awkwardly from her place beside the sofa, an incredulous Dannie looking up at her with his mouth agape. She didn’t know why she’d brought it up at all, honestly — they shared everything with each other, sure, but already this encounter with Carol was something she wanted to clutch to her chest and hide from the world as one would an embarrassing dream. _It’s not that much,_ she wanted to say, felt the words prying at the confines of her head… but it was. To them, to their apartment with its peeling walls and the rush they both felt when they found sales at the supermarket, it was.

“I’m sorry, okay?”  
  
She cast her mind back to the look on the cashier’s face, that hanging head, those drooping eyes.

“It was a flash decision.”  
  
Dannie’s expression softened now to one of bewildered pity, shuffling along the sofa in an invitation for Therese to come and sit. She folded into the aged cushions, sighing, before Dannie shifted to slip his arm around her shoulders. Sinking quietly into his embrace, she closed her eyes momentarily before the thoughts of Carol came flooding back in. Had it simply been a ploy to impress _her_? Therese hated the idea, but it wasn’t exactly far from what the truth could well have been — _look at me, look at the money I have to freely spend, look at everything I’m_ not. The flinch that she hadn’t even tried to conceal as she handed the money over, though; _that_ was the truth. She pitied him. She saw herself. Dannie patted her awkwardly on the shoulder before reaching behind her to grab the remote, pointing it vaguely in the direction of the old TV in the notorious question that often rode the coattails of such a gesture.

“Anything you wanna watch?”  
  
A repressed sigh made its way past Therese’s lips. If Dannie noticed it, he pretended not to, staring resolutely as he did at the TV.

“I’ll probably just get some sleep.”

His brown eyes found hers in the darkness, gaze slipping momentarily to the clock in the corner. It was 1am, Therese knew, and this had to be a reasonable excuse at this hour. Still, there was doubt in his gaze.

“Are you sure? There are some new movies…”

She could see his mind raking through its own archives in search of a film to watch, two hours of anything to keep them both distracted, and coming up empty. There was that familiar droop in his posture; a defeat.

“I’ll be okay, Dannie. I’m just tired.”  
  
With the reluctant nod that came, a few strands of his hair flopped down onto his forehead. She could see the wariness in his features; the ulcered corner of his lip bitten just one too many regretful times, the faint frown lines that caressed the edges of his eyes, the tense set of his constantly grinding jaw. Neither of them had quite recovered from the events of two months ago, and she was fairly sure that it would be a considerable amount of time before either of them ever did. Grazing a hand across his cheek in a platonic action reserved only for her closest friend, she nodded.

“I’ll be okay.”

* * *

An hour had passed now and still, Therese’s eyes were plastered unblinkingly open by the memory of her encounter with _Carol Aird._ She whispered the name again now, savouring the way that air simply seemed to taste sweeter as it wrapped itself around the word. There was that unmistakeable _fervour_ that came with releasing the syllables, trapped within its own confines by the rush of cautionary withdrawal that willed her to keep the words _safe — s_ imilar, in precedent, to scattered ‘ _I love you’_ s that become so abundant in one’s life that the fluttering sacredness of the idea of _love_ itself became ordinary. Familiar. She did not simply want Carol’s name to be _familiar._ She wanted to be embroiled in the tension between the allure of its owner and the danger of its repercussions; to wring it like a permeated rag in her mind until it dripped with the premise of everything it couldn’t be; to twist it around and around until any derivation that could be drawn from the word was thus drawn, etched into the darkened walls of her head. Carol Aird. _Carol Aird._ Therese fell asleep with a hand between her legs and a name between her lips, her breaths steep and desperate in the cool night air.

* * *

Four days later, and Therese had not yet told Dannie about Carol. The lie that wove itself from the threads of her guilt was one of self-assumed forgetfulness, of a reluctance to tell him what had happened after his outburst at the forty dollars — but the truth was there, certainly, a blade ready to slice at the deceitful tapestry that Therese had put together. Carol was _hers._ The encounter, at least, was hers. The book rested on her windowsill, pressed golden lettering glinting in the sunlight whenever Therese moved from her place on the bed. Next to it, a card. _Her_ card. Therese pushed herself off of the bed, slipping a nail underneath the card in the action of lifting it off of the window. She cast a silent glance towards her landline, untouched for however many weeks it had been, and then back down to the blue rectangle in front of her. _Aird Publishing & Co. _The lettering was thin and symmetrical, white on blue proving to be a successful feature of the slogan’s design.

Therese brushed her finger over the raised sections where the number and email address resided, a decision forming itself in her head before she could put up a single argument against it. _Pretend._ If Carol had never read the book, what was to stop Therese bluffing her way through the plot? It would be a reasonable excuse, certainly, better than anything else she’d been able to come up with — there simply was no stopping Therese as she sat down next to the desk where the phone resided. She grasped at the dusty plastic of what may as well have been a relic at this point, in the new technological era that was 2015, pressing the first few digits into the keypad before rational thought could get the better of her. With her finger resting over the penultimate integer, Therese paused. She hadn’t predicted this, certainly; this shortening of breath, this parched mouth, these shaking hands. It was now or never, though, she dared to suppose, jabbing her thumb into the remaining buttons. Silence. A muffled click, as the call went through. A ring.

The battle was almost lost, for a moment, her hand darting reflexively to the _hang up_ button with little warning other than a jolt of caution. _Don’t get lost in this._ It was too late for those kinds of subconscious naggings, though; she was never going to turn off of this treacherous road. Three rings, now, and before butterflies could begin their ordinary routine of dancing around her stomach until she found a way to shut them up, a voice. _Her_ voice. It was all that Therese could do to hold herself upright in the emptiness of her room.

“…Hello?”

Her breath was lost as that same, silken voice dripped down the line. Not even the crackle of the background noise could have quietened the thumping of Therese’s heart; she wouldn’t have been surprised if Carol had been able to hear her pulse quickening, so omniscient as she appeared to be.

“Hi, it’s me.”

 _It’s me? Is that it?_ There was silence from Carol on the other end of the phone and for a fleeting moment Therese was worried she’d hung up, tired of the relentless cold calls that tended to plague New York.

“Um, Therese. As in, that’s who’s calling.”  
  
That same crushing mortification that had enveloped her in the bookshop was back, a pleading inner critic begging her to just stop speaking like an embarrassed child at a poetry recital. An agonising few seconds passed, Carol’s breaths now just about audible over the phone.

“Well then, Therese _._ I was beginning to think you weren’t going to call.”  
  
It had only been four days, hadn’t it? A small flutter of something that could have been hope lit itself upon a spark in Therese’s stomach, butterflies weaving their patterns across her thoughts. The mere _idea_ that Carol had been waiting for this conversation as avidly as Therese had been was enough to set her hands shaking again, the phone trembling against her cheek.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to answer.”

Possibly the first cogent sentence that had come out of Therese’s mouth so far, it danced in the air between them both as she leaned back against the wall. She heard the faint parting of lips from Carol’s end of the call; a smile.

“How was the book?”

 _Shit._ The book that she had promised to read and hadn’t read, the only excuse that she’d had to call Carol in the first place. There were two options here; bullshit her way out of this with a vague plot summary and a garbled description, or put it down completely so that Carol wouldn’t read it and figure out her lie. A brief moment passed between them as Therese considered her options, the odds stacking further and further up against her.

“It was alright.”

If Carol sensed her uncertainty, she didn’t comment on it, choosing instead to make a nebulous sound that could have either been passive acceptance or disappointment. Therese’s eyes shut, desperate to make an impression slightly more positive than the struggling millennial she had presented thus far. Sensing the hesitation down the phone, she spoke again.

"I mean, it was good."

Another pause, and maybe Carol wasn't liking what she was saying. When had she ever been so unsure of herself?

"...Not good. Bad. Mediocre."

If it hadn't been obvious that she was bluffing before, it definitely was now.

“Mediocre?”  
  
Swallowing, Therese nodded — as if Carol could see her — the looming face of guilt already tugging its way into her vision, a puppet pulled by her strings. Nothing about this was mediocre. From the corner of her room, the book’s cover leered at her with its golden lettering.

“I was hoping you’d enjoy it. You payed the extra forty dollars for it, after all.”  
  
 _Why did I throw forty dollars at him,_ Therese wondered, dwindling on the inherent bizarreness of all that this was. 

“What did you think of the characters?”  
  
Therese started, a painfully direct question shattering the defences that were already fraught with their own fragility. _They were interesting_ wasn’t going to cut it because the next line of interrogation would inevitably come — ‘interesting how?’ — and there was no way that she could hold up this lie for so long.

“I haven’t read it.”

The truth was bound to come out eventually, but right now simply did not provide itself to be a great time. What was Carol going to think of her now? A charlatan with nothing better to do with her time than make up reviews for unread books — it certainly didn’t paint the best picture. A small huff of breath came down the line; exasperation, no doubt. Already, this was goodbye to the woman she’d never even seen in daylight. Therese shut her eyes, thunking the back of her head into the wall.

“I know.”  
  
Therese glanced up as if Carol would be standing in front of her, that same knowing look written upon her face. This wasn’t necessarily how she’d seen the conversation going but as long as there was a conversation to be had at _all,_ she would be satisfied.

“I knew as soon as you told me that the novel was _alright._ For one, it’s quite possible the least specific word that you could possibly have used — average, not too bad, nothing special. For another…”

The words flooded from Carol like water from a burst dam, as if speaking were as easy as breathing, to her. Perhaps it was.

“For another, I don’t think it’s particularly _alright_ at all.”

Therese blinked. The words crowded themselves into her mind, replaying themselves over and over for a painstaking few seconds before they entered a realm that brought them at least some form of comprehensibility.

“You’ve… read the book?”

Carol laughed, then. It was reticent, Therese sensed — this wasn’t that _throw your head back and laugh until there are tears streaming down your face_ kind of guffaw, but the sort of chuckle that you might release at a dinner party surrounded by people you have yet to acquaint. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. Briefly, surreptitiously, she shut her eyes and bathed in the sound as if it was sunlight, a velvet gauze draping itself over every other noise within hearing range.

“I’ve read the book.”

Still wrapped in that robe of euphoria, Therese’s eyebrows knitted together, trying to tesselate the pieces of this ever-stretching puzzle. A silence settled between them until Carol spoke again.

“I gave you my card, Terez-not-Tereese,” she murmured, making an informal mockery of the name’s French-tinged pronunciation, “because I wanted you to call me. That’s all, I suppose.”

 _I wanted you to call me._ This wasn’t about the book. This had never _been_ about the book. Therese’s mouth hung open, her mind reeling from the joint shock of both Carol’s revelation and the way she had said her name. If they were to become more than just familiar faces to each other, she was going to have to get used to it.

“…Oh.”

There was a rustle of fabric from Carol’s end as she settled back into the chair she was most likely sitting in, a deep sigh settling between them.

“So where did you grow up, Therese?”

* * *

Hours had passed, and yet not once had either woman glanced at a clock or a phone to gauge the time. It could have been months that they sat there, divulging their own life stories and savouring every new detail one learned about the other. Therese had chosen to step around the more troubled aspects of her childhood — an abusive father, an alcoholic mother, a social worker who did little more than hand her a packet of gummy bears should she come in with fresh bruise on her alabaster cheeks. Each question about her childhood had been answered truthfully, of course, but there were always details spared.

Carol, in turn, had grown up in Illinois; a town called Hinsdale, just west of Chicago. Therese listened as Carol gleefully recounted her childhood, painting these wonderful pictures of ice skating on flooded fields and sitting on the roof of her house with her father until the sun had come up. The smile was almost audible through the phone, and it was with a settling dread that Therese found her eyes beginning to droop shut. For the first time that evening, she flicked out her wrist to pull the sleeve back from her watch, immediately startled by the fact that midnight had long passed. Had they been talking for that long? Involuntarily, she let out a muffled yawn disguised immediately as a cough; but Carol heard. She paused her joyous disquisition on how her mother had always made the best blueberry muffins, releasing a rather startled breath.

“Shit, Therese, have I been keeping you awake?”

Her tone was apologetic almost to the point of pity, and Therese was quick to leap from her reverie in response.

“Of course not! No, it… this has been great. I barely noticed the time passing.”

Carol sighed, just about satisfied with the reply but clearly wound up nonetheless.

“Me neither.”  
  
Therese leaned sideways into the chest of drawers where the phone usually sat, her head resting contentedly on the aged wood.

“I guess this is goodnight, then.”

Therese heard the words coming out of her mouth and _hated_ them with a passion she wasn’t even aware she laid claim to — all she wanted to do was sit here on her numb legs and map out the winding pathways of Carol’s mind, losing herself down the darkened alleyways of joy and recollection.

“Therese—”

Therese was silent, her name on the other woman’s lips eliciting no audible reply but for the quiet gasp that echoed through the room. She waited for Carol’s next words, her heart fluttering in a way that was becoming rather more familiar than Therese was used to.

“Before you go… would it be too forward of me to ask for your address? If, if that’s not too overbearing. If it’s not too much.”

The smile that left dimples in Therese’s pale cheeks was entirely unprecedented on her behalf, so breathlessly euphoric as she suddenly felt. Never once throughout this phone call had she been expecting _Carol_ to make the first move and her mind had been partially distracted by how she would bring up the question all night. A weight, lifted. A grin, broadened.

“It’s not too much, at all. It’s perfect.”

There was a silence that settled between the women, so unlike any silence either had ever experienced before that it was almost startling. This was one fraught with the intertwined sensations of both mutual understanding and a tension that was almost palpable. Therese could almost smell Carol’s perfume already. Carefully, she rattled off her address to Carol, ignoring the pang of doubt that came with the idea of such a sophisticated woman being introduced to Therese’s deteriorating apartment. That would be a problem for tomorrow. And so, trapped in the wintry confines of a December night, Carol took down an address that wasn’t her own, running her fingers over the dark ink as it dried. On the other end of the line, Therese sat, her smile washed slowly away by the inevitable tide of fatigue.

Neither woman could still the pounding of their steadily beating hearts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- prestonsarchives :)


	3. Iktsuarpok

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! So, three things here, one, I had to mention Yee Li (the restaurant discussed in the chapter) because it was my favourite place to go for dumplings in NYC and it was closed down in 2019 :( consider this a tribute, I suppose. Secondly, it occurred to me as I was writing yesterday that the title of this fic may leave a few people confused — I completely forgot about the movie I’m Not There (featuring Cate Blanchett which, I’m sure, could be the reason behind why some of you will have come across it) — when I was trying to find a name for the story. In short, the title has nothing to do with the film I’m Not There (so far as I can tell), and it is more to do with (hopefully I’m not spoiling things here) Therese’s mental state throughout the fic itself. I may or may not be changing the title at some point in the future, so look out for that! (Sorry again for any confusion caused, I swear I'm not usually this hopeless) Thirdly, and finally, so sorry for the wait on this one! I was trying to stick to a schedule but I'm usually fairly awful at that... enjoy!

* * *

_Iktsuarpok (Inuit) — the feeling of anticipation that leads you to keep looking outside to see if someone is coming._

* * *

_“I’ll be coming over tomorrow at about 11, if it’s not too much of an inconvenience. Call me back if it is.”_

Therese listened to the now-familiar noise of a piece of Carol’s jewellery clinking against the phone before she hung up, tempted once again to press the _replay message_ button on the handset. Reluctantly, she slipped it back into its place on the chest of drawers, the click echoing through her empty room. Carol was coming over, _tomorrow._ The way she had simply invited herself over was a move that struck Therese as something far more than just bold — it was an assumption, the silent question that lay in whether or not Therese would call back and cancel. Of course, she wouldn’t; there was no material object in this world which could have convinced Therese to decline, but the thought lingered. She swirled her fingers in the layer of dust that had settled in the shadow of the landline, glancing over at her mobile and wondering why she hadn’t called Carol on _that._ They would have been able to text, that way, but this seemed… fitting. She hadn’t touched the landline in months prior to their meeting, nor had she felt that same flash of connection with anyone, in just as long. The anachronistic device represented more, suddenly, than just a means of communication. Starting, Therese glanced up as Dannie poked his head around the door.

“We cooking tonight or is it Yee Li?”

With an effect that was worryingly instant, Therese’s mouth started watering at the thought of the wonton soup her and Dannie had lived on through their university years — she could see that look in his eyes, too, the one that was raptured in the quiet hope that she’d choose the latter option. She grinned, watching the surprise that flitted across his face in reaction to such an uncharacteristic expression of joy for Therese.

“Takeaway sounds great.”

He smiled back at her, pumping his fist in a mock celebration of tonight’s dinner — they hadn’t had Chinese in ages and this was a welcome breach of their ordinary routine. As he backed out, he glanced again at Therese, at the welcome contentedness in her composure that he had missed so. The grin on his face was unmissable and Therese might have commented on it had she not known exactly the reason for its quiddity. Somewhere, in her, for the first time in months, there was hope.

* * *

"What if she's straight?"

Carol laughed across the table as Abby regarded her from across the rim of her near-empty glass, a cunning smile creasing her features. The two hadn’t had dinner together for a while and she was glad their ordinary banter hadn’t dissipated, so fragile as their relationship had the prospect to be. The blunder she’d made three years ago — a drunken wink, a stolen kiss, a deserted motel — had attached itself like a weight to their friendship afterwards and for months, Carol been worried that the two women would never quite find their way back to each other. It had been her to make the first move of apology, and the look on Abby’s face when she had opened her front door to find Carol standing there had been one so lost that Carol made the silent promise never to leave her again. Originally, she’d had to be careful to hold back on the signals she’d been so unashamed of before — no casual touches, no flirtatious grins — but now, as she reached across the table to grasp Abby’s hand in a gesture of platonic excitement, she was confident that the barriers they had obliterated were finally setting themselves back up again.

"For one, the yearning. The being in a deserted bookshop at close enough to midnight that it may well have been the next day."

Carol frowned, unconvinced. Straight girls yearned, right?

"Secondly, what was she wearing?"

A pause.

"A flannel?"

Abby chuckled, the laughter rushing from her in a knowing exhale as she shook her head.

"So she's gay. Young enough to think that wearing plaid is making some sort of sapphic statement, too. Take care of this one."

It was Carol’s turn to smile this time, her gaze slipping inadvertently away as Abby dug further into the truth she’d been avoiding until now.

"Maybe."

 _Hopefully,_ but she wouldn't even admit that to herself, yet.

A comfortable silence enveloped the two — Carol hoped, at least, that it was comfortable — and Abby tipped the last dregs of her whiskey from her glass. With a quiet wince at the alcohol content of this particular brand, she directed a pointed glance at the clock on the wall.

“Time to go?”

* * *

Monday, and Therese was awake before dawn. That wasn’t saying much, considering the sun preferred to cosy itself under the skyline until about 10am on these December mornings, but she was distinctly aware that not even the birds had started chirping their ceaseless carol.

_Carol._

The thought jolted her almost out of bed, the dogged blanket falling to the floor in the jarring exposure of Therese’s bare legs to the cool air outside. Any traces of the grogginess that had whittled itself into her thoughts was gone, a wintry combination of goosebumps and chattering teeth ensuring that she was very much awake. What with the birds still resting it couldn’t have yet gone five — Therese, however, took no notice, tugging on the nicest blouse she laid claim to with fingers still stiff from the cold. Neither she nor Dannie had yet contacted the landlord about their broken boiler; in a silent acknowledgement of the money they simply didn’t have to spend on insurance, the likelihood was that the apartment would stay frosty until March drew her glorious warmth through their flat. Her feet were blocks of ice on the linoleum floor.

In a bid not to wake Dannie until at least 8, she crept from her room to the kitchen, the scent of last night’s dumplings still freshly imprinted into the crevices of the ageing wall. There were still residual stains of soya sauce on the counter. Turning to grab a cloth from the kitchen sink, Therese paused, caught out by the glimmer of her reflection in one of the glass-paned cabinets. Two tired green irises met her gaze, tinged extrinsically with flecks of brown that Dannie liked to say were actually golden, she just wasn’t looking hard enough. Certainly, though, they paled in comparison to the aquamarine eyes that had greeted her in the bookshop, ringed as they were by a darker shade that threw all claims of ‘blue-eyed innocence’ out of the window. Even now — days on from the encounter — the thought slid like silk down her spine.

It was on rare occasions in which she and Dannie ever had visitors that she was forced to take in the overall lack of care that they put into their small flat; it wasn’t messy, by most definitions of the word, but the issues lay in the dozens of tiny discrepancies that were littered throughout the apartment. A mug not cleared away, a pair of shoes by the sofa, a coat lying on the windowsill — they gathered, and before they knew it the flat was as messy as it had been weeks ago before they’d tidied it up. That was the thing with clutter. It started small and then one day, there was just a line crossed where procrastination turned into disdain and the whole aesthetic of the flat ended up looking like the aftermath of a college party. Therese sighed, brushing the rambling thoughts out of her head as she did crumbs off of the coffee table. Four hours and forty-one minutes until she arrived. For the second time this morning, Therese suppressed the shiver that rolled down her back, inhaling once and contemplating whether or not a cold shower would be necessary.

It was.

* * *

Four hours and thirty-seven minutes later, the clock read 10:56 and the world had stopped turning. Therese twisted one leg over the other in an attempt to sit in something of a _sophisticated_ position, realising with a flustered inhale that obviously she was going to have to get up and answer the door first unless Dannie had hired a butler in the last twelve hours without her knowledge. Brushing nonexistent debris from her jeans, she stood, heading over to the kettle and switching it on in the hope that the noise would drown out the fluttering of what was ordinarily a steady heartbeat. Just as the steam started funnelling out of its spout, she flicked it back off again, irrationally worried that the sight of a just-boiled kettle would lead Carol to think that she had been watching the clock and timing exactly when to brew a pot of tea in accordance to when her newfound accomplice would walk through the door — although, all said, that was exactly what she’d been doing.

What was she going to say when Carol arrived anyway? _Hello_ didn’t seem to cut it, _nice to see you again_ was something that a bad villain might say to their nemesis, _how do you do_ was straight from a bad comedy about nineteenth century Britain — all that she could hope was that Carol would choose to speak first, eliciting what would (ideally) be a competent reply from Therese. She sucked in a breath, glancing for what had to be the twentieth time at the clock — _eleven o’clock and thirteen seconds_ — and three resounding knocks shattered the silence of her living room.

Therese almost jumped out of her skin — she hadn’t been expecting a knock, stupidly, as if Carol was going to simply glide in on a cloud of confidence and glory. It was a fun thought, really, but not one that Therese could spare the seconds to consider as she headed towards the entrance. With a final glance at her timid reflection in the hallway mirror, Therese plastered on a nonchalant smile and pulled open the door. The sight that greeted her was nothing that she could have prepared for in all her hours of waiting — almost all of her focus, for a period of time, was dedicated solely to clamping her jaw shut in rational fear of the fact that without that willpower there would have been _nothing_ to stop her mouth dropping open in awe.

Usually, the flickering lights of that aged corridor made almost anyone look at least a decade older and three nights more sleep deprived — but of course, Carol wasn’t _almost anyone_ and she may as well have installed a ring-light behind Therese for how radiant she looked. A smile crept across her face in response to Therese’s obvious veneration at her appearance, and she tilted her head slightly so as to keep the brunette at eye level. It was becoming increasingly clear that no, Carol was not going to be the one to speak first, and in a ridiculously flustered attempt at coming up with some form of greeting, Therese stepped back and motioned towards the apartment.

“…Tea?”

 _Tea._ Carol cocked an amused eyebrow at the strange spin that Therese had apparently put on _hello,_ looking generously away as the regret made itself apparent on the other woman’s face. At this point, _how do you do_ was starting to look more and more acceptable but apart from the humoured expression, Carol made no great deal of Therese’s blunder. It was a look that Therese was already becoming dangerously attached to, its indescribable allure unmatchable by any emotion that other people could hope to display. Tea. Of all things, tea.

“Hello to you too.”

The younger woman stepped aside as Carol breezed in, inhaling once — as surreptitiously as physically possible — as her perfume wafted momentarily into the house. Carol spun, gripping Therese once again in that inescapable cerulean gaze.

“Tea sounds great, actually.”

As Carol walked through into the kitchen, Therese watched her eyes wander through the room.

“Like I said, it's a pretty small flat.”

The blonde woman’s gaze snapped back to Therese. She avoided the statement, instead casting her eyes from the kitchen and into the 'living' room — a sofa, a TV, and more books than Therese ever bothered to count — and smiling, an emotion on her face that looked something like awe. Therese could see Carol marvelling at the stacks and stacks of paperbacks that littered the apartment, her eyes squinting momentarily before she looked back at the younger woman.

“Did you put all of these into alphabetical order?”  
  
Therese grinned, nodding her head over to a nook in the corner where she usually took to reading. It was by the radiator, and so on days when the heating was actually on, it remained to be her favourite spot in the building.

“If you sit there, you can see the twenty-six stacks going clockwise in that order around the room. The reason why some stacks are tiny is because obviously there aren’t too many authors whose surnames begin with _x,_ or _q,_ or _z_ for instance.”

A look of bewildered humour crossed Carol’s face as she stepped into the corner, and she looked up at Therese as if she’d just discovered the culprit in a mystery book — _enraptured,_ Therese thought, as if such a socialite as Carol could ever be _enraptured_ with a someone like her.

“I'm sure there was something in _Country Living_ about shelves being overrated.”

As Therese turned, grinning, to turn on the kettle for a second time, she heard something of a whisper coming from Carol’s place beside her, drowned suddenly out by the whistling of the appliance.

“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but… aren’t there twenty-seven?”

 _She was counting._ With the kettle still screeching its steady tune, Therese had to make her way over to Carol in order to be within hearing range. Whether it had been deliberate or not, she’d left out the final row of novels that sat away from the sunlight, perched upon the otherwise-unused mantel. Following her gaze, Carol’s eyes came to rest on the collection of books that lay there, placed in a manner that suggested no order at all.

“What about those?”

After a moment, Therese looked earnestly up at Carol, holding eye contact for what may well have been the longest time since they’d met. A flash of something crossed the older woman’s features, gone as soon as it had come. Curiosity — perhaps.

"I was doing a philosophy class a few years back. Someone asked me what I'd rescue, if there was a fire in this building. Wouldn't be unlikely, to be fair. The first few answers were generic things — you know, devices, pets, kids," She noted the dubious look on Carol’s face.

“Not that kids are generic or anything, you know, but, as in, generic in terms of the obvious thing you’d save.”

 _You’re babbling._ The kettle had boiled. Therese continued.

"I'd save the books."

She paused, momentarily, a frown creasing the space between her eyebrows as she traced her finger down the spine of a yellowed copy of The Old Man and the Sea — Carol nodded empathetically, chewing absent-mindedly on a corner of her lip. Another indecipherable emotion drew its steady trail across her face, featherlight in its journey, threateningly heavy in its repercussions. It was gone in an instant, though, a smile finding itself in the tide that washed all traces of melancholy away. Her eyes were fixed on the novel that sat itself on the very edge of the column.

“ _The Book Thief_?”  
  
The question was easy enough to discover within the words themselves. _How is it here, if you haven’t even read it?_ Therese steeled herself, contemplating exactly how she was planning to phrase the next few words. Carol noticed it, that now-familiar glint of curiosity lighting her irises up, flares against the darkness within.

“Sometimes it’s the memories that the books carry. The… people that they remind you of. They can matter, too.”  
  
Carol breathed in, the air between them seeming to flood itself with warmth and freeze itself over with cold, simultaneously. Blinking, she turned away, making a haphazard motion towards the kettle. The water would surely be tepid by now.

"Anyway. Tea?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, as always, are welcomed. Thank you all for reading.


	4. Kilig

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To my dearest readers (at least, to anyone that's still here), I have to apologise for the time that this chapter took to publish. If it's any consolation, I think it's the longest chapter that I've written so far — hence why I spent so much more time agonising over every interaction described within. There are still parts which I'm not entirely happy with, but I did my best to capture that unique tension that only our dear Therese and Carol hold... here's to hoping I did an alright job.

* * *

_Kilig (Tagalog) — the weak in the knees, spontaneous blushing and quickening pulse, butterfly in the stomach sensation._

* * *

The hours that passed slipped by in the way that time does when happiness is on the cards — quiet and nonchalant, as if to proclaim the normality of the two women in each other’s company. It was the calming certainty that Therese had been searching for; as much as she loved Dannie, he did love to talk and it was a welcome reprieve that she sought in the comfortable silences she and Carol slipped into, mugs of tea steaming between them. Not once had the older women shown any disdain at all for Therese’s slightly ‘wabi sabi’ apartment, her attention focused almost entirely on Therese herself. At around noon, Dannie had appeared from his room and almost immediately she had recognised that apprehensive look on his face, so wary as he had become to anyone new in Therese’s life. She couldn’t fault him, really — he’d seen the aftermath of what could happen if he _wasn’t_ wary enough and the protectiveness was something she’d simply gotten used to.

So enraptured as she was in Carol, it was starting to look like his caution would be useful in holding her back from the inevitable fall. He’d glanced first at Carol, a once-over, a reaction, before his gaze had drawn itself back to Therese, head tilted. _Who is this?_ The question had been neither spoken nor mouthed but she understood it anyway in the way his eyebrows had knitted together, concerned. With a shake of her head and a smile, she had dissuaded any further questions at the time, but she knew that once Carol was gone there would be an entire interrogation. Aside from that minor interruption — _was that your brother?_ Carol had asked, smiling — the two women found solace in the same sorts of topics they had been discussing on the phone. Childhoods, futures, memories, dreams. Every detail of Carol’s life was enough of a wonder to send Therese’s head reeling; things so small as the car her mother had almost crashed decades ago was an entire adventure that she could bring herself on — how often had Carol sat in that car? Where had it taken her? Had it been the one she had used to learn to drive? In a fashion that Therese hoped wasn’t obsessive, she wanted to know every single thing that she could about this woman who held her so unknowingly in every word she said; a web, perhaps, of silken syllables, of cautious phrase.

When the hour hand of Therese’s slightly stalling clock finally drew its steady angle to seven, the conversation stilled between the two.

“Doesn’t feel like I’ve been here for eight hours, does it?”

Carol smiled, tracing her finger around the rim of her empty mug.

“Not at all.”

She looked up at Therese and allowed their eyes to connect for a moment, blue on green for as long as time dared to flow around them. Her movement stilled.

“Anyway, I should get going. It is…”

A glance at the timepiece, the beginnings of a frown.

“Seven, after all.”

Therese nodded, patting her lap once as she pulled herself up from the sofa in a gesture she wasn’t quite sure where she’d learned. Carol stood at the same time, mug in hand.

“Do you want me to put this anywhere?”

Therese smiled. 

“Oh, no, it’s okay thanks. Just leave it on the table and I’ll wash it up later tonight.”

The two women made their way to the door — slowly, Therese noted, as if neither quite wanted to actually take that final step, as if neither quite wanted this night to end. In that classically elegant way of hers, Carol spun to look at Therese, her countenance a portrait of hesitation, of doubt, of possibility. The left collar of her coat was slightly misshapen and it was with all of the willpower that Therese could summon up that she held back from reaching out and fixing it, her fingers grazing the exposed skin of Carol’s chest. The jolting realisation came, as it usually did, that she had been staring, lost in the dark ocean of thoughts that always seemed to arrive with connotations of her, touching Carol.

The older woman was a map far more important than any of the ones Therese had seen pasted into an atlas at school — one that she would be the one to chart, dips and curves and lines and oceans ready and waiting to be sought out by the steadily growing courage of their cartographer. For now, though, Therese waited, relying instead on the hope that the image of Carol’s collarbone would be etched into her thoughts anyway. Carol’s eyes searched her, bemused by the way that Therese almost seemed to glaze over in pensive curiosity, her mouth open just wide enough that the older woman’s lips could have fit perfectly into place on Therese’s — a jigsaw. Hundreds of strewn pieces that lay across the floor, shards of each woman and the baggage they carried between them.

There was a question on those lips now, the beginnings of a sentence asked so quietly that perhaps Carol could have been imagining it all. She stilled at the sound of her named falling, an injured soldier, off of Therese’s tongue.

“Yes?”

How desperately she wanted to fit the word _darling_ onto the end of her response. How painful it was to know that such boundaries were amongst examples of those that could never be uncrossed. Even without the added two syllables, Therese felt her composure shatter as the word rolled like a tempest into the air around them, swallowing what little courage she had left in a swirling broth of darkening clouds. Still, somehow, she found the voice to continue, a muffled clap of thunder in the storm.

“Would you want to come out to dinner? With me?”  
  
 _With who else? Come on, Therese._ The question hung low in the air as Carol looked up, a whirling combination of surprise and intrigue briefly worrying her countenance before she glanced calmly away again. Therese felt each second drag painfully by, splitting the air between them with a blade indistinguishable from the tension itself. 

“Tonight?”

Something about the way about the way that Carol murmured the suggestion drew an invisible finger up Therese’s spine, another shudder suppressed as she straightened her posture.

“Tonight, if… you’re not busy. If you want to.”

She felt like a child asking a teacher for a favour, each rambling sentence tripping from her lips unchecked. Carol, seemingly oblivious to Therese’s nervousness, appeared almost pleased at the notion that she’d be busy on such a thing as a Monday night in December, a smile painting her features in that affectionate glow that Therese couldn’t get enough of.

"I'd love to."

In another world, Therese might have squealed at the delight that flooded her vision, a towering wave of warmth that crashed through her body, lighting her thoughts on _fire._ In this one, she bit back a grin and turned quietly towards the door.

* * *

Therese had expected the decision process for tonight’s restaurant to be one of those painfully drawn-out back-and-forth conversations that were joked about in bad rom-coms, and she was pleasantly surprised when Carol turned to her as they climbed into the taxi, a question poised behind her features.

“Have you ever heard of Keens?”

Yes, Therese had heard of Keens, quite possibly the most prestigious steakhouse in the city — every guidebook that she had been able to find on her journey up to New York for the first time had worshipped it, singing its praises for about three pages each time. As was expected, though, the prices within made her eyes water — never had Therese actually considered taking a step inside.

“The steakhouse?”  
  
Carol nodded, pulling up the restaurant’s website on her phone. Therese took the device, her index finger brushing Carol’s pinky as she took a look at the interior. It certainly looked more upscale than the takeaways that her and Dannie often frequented, the ceiling lined with… cutlery? Sticks?

“Pipes. The largest collection of churchwarden pipes in the world, I think.”

Carol’s eyes had followed Therese’s inquisitive gaze to the screen, and she grinned now as the brunette handed back the phone.

The journey to the restaurant was otherwise suspended in a delicate calm, Therese’s gaze shifting steadily between the woman beside her and the city around her, each as enthralling as the other. No matter how much time she spent in New York, she would always remain incredulous at how extraordinary a place it was, and the same conclusion seemed to be drawing itself out of every new hour she spent with Carol. Street lights pulsed on by, the city’s own heartbeat, as both women lost themselves in the view outside and the reflections of each other on the glass within. As was so often the case in this stretching jungle of signs and lights and liberty, mere minutes had passed before the cab pulled over, the driver turning around to collect his fare.

Both parties reached for their wallets, eyes locking as the predicament sprouted from the darkness of the taxi, a weed amongst roses. Therese watched as Carol’s eyebrows raised — just slightly, just enough to convey the words left unsaid. _Let me._ In a gesture that surprised both of them, Therese shook her head, reaching over to rest one hand on top of Carol’s and the other to tug the notes from her purse. A power move, of sorts. The exchange was over in seconds, silence weaving its web between the two women as they stepped out of the car. Carol’s mouth hung open — not obviously, but it was enough to distract Therese from the way her left hand _burned_ where it had rested on Carol’s. How desperately she’d wanted never to pull away.

“You didn’t have to—”

Therese smiled up at a now-flustered Carol, tucking her purse back into the deep pocket of her coat.

“I know. It’s okay.”

 _Another_ unreadable expression now, one of two eyes briefly squinting, of the sheltered ghost of a smile — almost as if, contrary to anything Therese was cognisant of, it was Carol who was trying to read _her._

_Who is this girl?_

As they approached the restaurant, both women became suddenly (and irreparably) aware of the distance that lay between them. More appropriately, the lack thereof. So close in proximity were they that with every swing of Carol’s arm as she walked, Therese could feel the rush of cool air that the movement left behind — it swirled past her fingers, an invisible warning that any nearer and they would have been touching. _Holding hands._ The thought was childish, the kind of thing kids get excited about doing with their crushes in elementary school, and yet here, as it rushed headily into the atmosphere, Therese found herself lost in it. In the implications, in the exhilaration, in Carol.

It struck Therese as they were walking in that neither she nor Carol had thought to get a reservation — by the looks of almost every table in the restaurant being at capacity, that could be a decision they later regretted. Carol sensed it, too — Therese’s unease, though, rather than the full restaurant itself — and smiled. The course of events would be the same as they always were. A chain reaction. One of the waitstaff would see her, their eyes lighting up upon the entrance of one of their most frequent customers, a smile plastering its way onto their well-trained faces. She would say hello and ask for a table — _of course, ma’am; the usual spot?_ — and as if the setting were some cheesy film about the morals of celebrity rather than the life she was simply living, she would be lead to the table beside the window on the second floor that peered surreptitiously down onto the road below.

Passing by, she had seen other people sitting right in this spot — it wasn’t like they only ever let her sit there — but for some reason, it was always available whenever she happened to be passing by. Clockwork. And, like clockwork, the two women were now whisked away to their window seat, Therese’s eyes wide with this illustrious treatment that she had never received before. It was a dance — a duet — Therese and Carol the notorious stars of the show as waiters twirled around them, taking coats and pulling out chairs and handing over menus to the tune of an inaudible melody. Whichever song they were moving to, Therese knew, it was beautiful. Perhaps it would be fitting to announce that small talk overcame the conversation as it so often did, but as was always the case with Carol, this was nothing of the sort. _Big talk,_ if that was ever coined as a term. Returned now was that glorious excitement that had swept up their taxi on the ride over, Carol’s gaze fluttering delightedly over the collection of clay pipes that did indeed line the ceiling. With her mouth open in a dazed grin, Therese watched that same, cool mask come slipping away, the wonderful reality of _this_ Carol flooding through.

Before their starters had even arrived, she was laughing at some offhand thing Therese had let slip, the noise forming something of a bubble that surrounded them both, untouchable even by the people who sat around them. There was a certain warmth that settled itself on the table, around the starters that eventually came, winding its way between the wine glasses that sat, untouched, by two not-quite-strangers too enthralled by the very premise of each other to focus on anything else. Every time Carol uttered her name, every time those two stretching syllables reverberated around that same bubble, the warmth shimmered, pooling unsteadily in a region rather more southern than Therese had been expecting. She wanted to _breathe_ this woman, to feel her way around Carol’s porcelain skin until the map was complete, until there wasn’t a place she had yet to discover.

“What do you… _dream_ about, Therese?”

Therese, halfway through a piece of calamari, looked up. The question had caught her more than off-guard — moments ago, they’d been discussing their favourite cities (hers Tokyo, Carol’s Amsterdam) and it was all she could do to refrain from letting a word slip quietly from her mouth — one that would cross more boundaries than she knew how to, elicit more questions than she could ever hope to answer.

_You._

Carol’s gaze probed further into Therese’s eyes as she swallowed, putting a modest hand over her mouth. A series of useless answers rolled their way into her head, stomping out the lights of any remotely intelligent thing that she could have chosen to say. The tension built. In reality, she’d given up on dreaming of anything at around fourteen, because there simply did not seem to be a point in wishing and wishing for a future that could never be born of her circumstances. A sad foster kid, with nothing much going for her apart from the books she read, and the words she wrote. What a resumé that would end up making.

“Uh.”

 _Of all the things._ Therese paused as Carol’s left eyebrow raised, a pleasant whirl of bemusement threading a new tapestry of her countenance. Intrigue.

“I mean, my childhood mostly.”  
  
A suppressed chuckle from Therese, and Carol’s right eyebrow drew itself up to join its counterpart. The choice that remained now found itself within exactly how much baggage she was going to unpack, sitting here in one of the most upscale restaurants in Brooklyn.

"Just imagining what it'd be like if I could go back and fix things. My parents, primarily. They didn't do such a good job of..."

Every nerve in Therese’s body _screamed_ that now was the time to abort mission, she’d said enough, she’d done _enough_. This same _baggage_ had reduced her to absolutely nothing just months before and it was Dannie and Dannie alone who had built her back up. She couldn’t risk that again, surely?

“Of…?”

Therese could sense the way that Carol was easing the words out of her, and god, it was working. She would tell any secret to this woman and both of them knew it. With a heavy inhale, Therese went on.

“Of parenting. Which, you know, parents who can’t parent… doesn’t usually equate to a great childhood. As soon as I was old enough to leave, I was gone.”

Despite Therese's chuckled attempt at easing the solemness of this conversation. Carol nodded, her eyes giving way to worlds of empathy that Therese had never truly seen before when she told this story — or, at least, some washed out variant. Usually the reaction was pity, sorrow, awkward attempts at consolation; this was nothing of the sort. This was Carol, reaching across the table, placing a steady hand on Therese’s wrist _._ The moment of involuntary and absolute honesty reared up, a foreign beast, up in front of them, and with cautious delicacy Carol pulled her hand back to her own cutlery.

The conversation still stretched on past the realms of normality; far beyond the towering steaks that neither could finish as their main course — no question that Carol asked, however, struck Therese with quite the force as _what do you dream about_ had. Occasionally, their fingers would touch as they both went to take another sip of wine; occasionally, Carol’s leg would brush up against Therese’s foot in response to the coincidence of them both shifting their positions on the restaurant chairs simultaneously.The contact was enough to send Therese reeling, so suddenly that she never quite noticed the way Carol would have to clear her throat at the same time.

Dozens of anecdotes slipped on by with the evening, Keens slowly but inexorably emptying out table by table until Therese and Carol were one of three groups left in the restaurant. The air itself was quieter, rid finally of tipsy laughter and chattering voices, and the bubble surrounding them seemed to grow. Voices came down with the lightness of the conversation — an unsteady combination of four glasses of wine and the urge to get to know each other had tainted the atmosphere, darkened it. Discussions of hopes and aspirations had whittled themselves down to reminiscence and regret, two saddened smiles meeting halfway across the table.

Even Carol — renowned by else acquaintances for her distinct coldness in ordinary tête-à-têtes — found herself tugging her reluctant heart open to this mysterious brunette, finding it within her own memory to discuss what she would have changed about her whole life. She would have seen more, done more, said more, taken trips around the world. _With you,_ and the thought was as fleeting as it was ridiculous. They barely knew each other. It was with the courage saved from holding back _those_ words that Therese found the strength to set more words out into the air, birds uncaged.

“You _look_ like someone who's travelled the world.”

A colour almost as dark as the red they were drinking rose instantly to her already slightly-flushed cheeks, regret clouding her features just as instantly as joy flooded Carol’s. Both expressions were quickly hidden, one pair of eyes looking down, the other away. The thought of going anywhere with each other was so delightfully foreign that it almost appeared familiar, and wits were collected just as bountifully as fantasies of southern France, central Caribbean, northern Japan. Testing water with gloved hands, Carol drew the idea further across their own blank page.

“...In what sense?”  
  
Therese glanced up, childish glee lighting up her irises in a way that Carol had not yet seen. Something told her, though, that there was a lot that she had not yet seen, about Therese. Worlds, perhaps.

“Like — people who've _been_ places, they have this thing about them.”

She didn't elaborate. She couldn't — she didn't dare.

“Should we get the bill?”

_No. Please, please, don’t let this be the end._

“Good idea.”

Momentarily, as Carol leaned slightly backwards to catch one of the waiters’ eyes, Therese took the chance to look at her — more than simply the glances at and away that she had been entertaining all evening, but really, truly drink her in, a newfound artist admiring a sculpture far superior to anything she had seen before. As it so often tended to do, Carol’s beauty struck her like a skidding car in winter — not deliberate, but with enough force to knock the wind from her lungs, to shatter her bones, to stop her heart. If she could paint, she knew that Carol would forever have been her muse, because what an injustice it would have been to paint anything else when such beauty lay in such attainable view. And yet, she could not imagine ever trying to paint Carol in the first place, because on that same note of _justice,_ how could any paint-adorned canvas do Carol justice at all? No illustration could ever possibly capture the slope of her collarbone, the angle of her jaw, the way her eyes dug mines into parts of herself that not even Therese was able to find. Caught up in the echoing predicament of _to paint or not to paint,_ she almost missed her cue to look away right as Carol’s gaze found its way back to Therese. Pining was a solitary thing.

"I'll pay."

She spoke with such fervent domination that it seemed to pin Therese’s own arms to her sides, try as she might to reach for her purse and split the bill, at least. A quiet part of her, though (a deafening part, realistically) made sure to remind her that paying for even half of what this meal had amounted to would simply not be an expense that she could ever indulge in. At the resigned spark of retaliation in Therese’s eye that appeared nonetheless, Carol shook her head. There was a gap between them, unaddressed.

"Wanna come home with me?"

With a wink — her first wink, at Carol, _for_ Carol — Therese turned to hail a cab, choosing very carefully indeed to ignore the _deep_ red blush that had coloured Carol's cheeks. That would be something to think about, later. As of yet, though, they were back to being Therese and Carol, two not-even-strangers-anymore so prematurely invested in one another that it would be a chore to ever fully disentangle themselves from each other. And how wonderful a thought that was.

As Therese turned to slide into the taxi, she noted the relief that had unclenched Carol’s shoulders, a matter resolved, a silence revoked. Something, whatever that _something_ was, felt uncharacteristically sour about just allowed the matter to pass, but that was a discussion she would have with herself far into the small hours of tonight. Overthinking was a lonesome pastime, and yet it seemed to be one of her mind’s favourite hobbies thus far. She shivered, even though the door had long shut. Her body ached to sidle up to Carol’s, to slip between her arms and see just how well their bodies fit together, to seek warmth from within someone else (rather than her broken radiator) for the first time in months. Fatigue stole all chatter from the taxi, far more effective a robber than highwaymen had ever been. Minutes passed and there was her apartment block again, the car pulling over as both women stepped slowly out. Carol paid. Therese dwelled.

Within a matter of footsteps, there was the door, there were the stairs, here was goodbye.

“Thank you, for tonight.”

With a tired grin, Carol smiled.

“Thank _you_ for the idea in the first place. I've not been out to eat in ages.”

They stood, unmoving. Statues but for their condensing breaths.

 _Not to paint,_ Therese thought. _Not to paint, so much as to take in her beauty every day until eternity arrives._

"Goodnight, Therese."

_Never to paint, for not a minute could be spent looking at a canvas, when you could be looking at her._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little bit of classism from Carol, but hey, rich is rich, after all. As you can imagine, that'll likely be a point of tension later on (spoilers? me?) but as for now, all is calm on the belivaird ocean. One of the main reasons why this chapter took such an age lies in that last scene, which I must have written and rewritten about 20 odd times now. I just couldn't seem to get it right and I'm not sure if I actually have, so feel free to let me know how you feel about it all. (If you think it's all an incoherent mess, let me know, because I'm not completely sure on this one.)
> 
> Also, I was rereading LKTM's most recent masterpiece and I was wondering, as she did in some of the chapter notes, how old would anyone hazard a guess at me being?
> 
> — prestonsarchives


	5. Saudade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo sorry about the wait on this one, guys! We've got a little bit of me trying to get into Dannie's head here so forgive me if his character seems a bit all over the place. To anyone who's still reading, my ever-stretching gratitude. There may also be a few errors in this considering at least two thirds of it were written about 15 minutes ago (to give some context, it's 3:15am) so I'll apologise in advance for them.

* * *

_Saudade (Portuguese) — a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves._

* * *

Rest came as unsteadily as it usually did for Therese, her gaze ploughing into the near-darkness of her room and searching for an escape in anything familiar, anything at all. Even through the caliginosity of it, she could still see the peeling wallpaper in the corner, drawn by water damage and age away from the wall since she had arrived. At some point, she’d have to fix that. That would, of course, require actually caring enough about the appearance of her room to fix it in the first place — it would be a while.

She turned again, her leg now sticking just out of the edge of the duvet, the coolness of the winter air taking her thoughts momentarily away from the only thing she could seem to think about. _Carol._ Even now, five hours on from their goodbye, she could still feel the warmth of Carol’s palms pressed against her back, the comfort of Carol’s chin resting on the crown of her head. She shivered, putting her uneasiness decidedly down to the temperature. The warmth that emanated from her core spoke differently of exactly why she was shivering, and Therese ignored that too. It was too late for this.

_And yet._

Heaving a slightly frustrated sigh, Therese gathered the blanket up from the rest of her body and pushed it onto the mattress beside her, steadying herself as she sat up. Sleep wasn’t going to come — at least, not for another few hours — and when it did, Therese knew all too well the name she would call out and follow into consciousness, sweat pooling in the hollow of her neck as she dreamt. _Carol._ Carol, over and over again until it was a foreign word that stumbled from her mouth, just as uninvited as the fantasies themselves. She willed herself away from them now, away from the bed that would hold her as she writhed; light feet padding across the hardwood. _God,_ it was cold this time of year.

She’d been meaning to invest in slippers since November, but the reminder had always eluded her right when she needed it, and bare her feet remained. The latch on her door was painfully loud as she tugged it back, echoing through the house like a misfire. She shut her eyes, briefly, listening for any sign of life from Dannie. Nothing. The light in here was better, seeping in from under the front door and gaps in the blinds, and Therese could easily see enough to make her way over to fridge. Empty, apart from three cans of beer, a bottle of milk, and some minced beef she’d been meaning to do something with. _I bet Carol’s fridge is full to the brim. Wine and caviar and tapenade and all that fancy shit._ She stepped back, noting that the milk’s expiry date had long passed — _wasn’t that the milk I put in Carol’s tea?_ — picking up the throw that was supposed to be on the couch and draping it over her shoulders like one of those sad Victorian children she’d read about in _A Christmas Carol._

_Carol._

She really couldn’t escape that damned name.

* * *

“Therese?”  
  
Dannie waved a cautious hand in front of her face in an attempt to draw her attention back to him, the steam from the cafetière rising up, a shield between them.

“Yeah?”

“You’re miles away.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry."

Therese looked down at her coffee.

"S'fine."

"The blonde?”  
  
Therese looked back down at her coffee, her smile sheepish and restrained. Dannie leaned across the table, nudging her, an equally _un_ restrained grin painted on his face.

“The hot one?”

Therese’s eyebrows drew up with her gaze.

“She’s not _just_ a hot blonde!”

The glint in Dannie’s eyes became apparent, his mouth hanging open accusatorially. _Jackpot._

“Therese Belivet, you _flirt._ ”

With a mock scowl on her face, she reached across the table, punching her makeshift interrogator softly on the arm.

“She’s barely even a friend _._ We met last Tuesday in the bookshop I like and she’s really nice.”

Dannie guffawed, coffee spilling unceremoniously from the side of his mouth.

“Friend as in, with benefits?”

In a bid to distract from the pinkish hue rising steadily up her cheeks, Therese flicked a piece of her toast at Dannie. She was moments too late, though, and he bounded up, his chair scraping across the floor behind him.

“You’re blushing!”

Therese tilted her head back to stare past the ceiling, praying to any god that existed that this line of questioning would end. _Soon._

“And you're an idiot, _Daniel_."

Dannie shook his head, abjectly refusing to drop the subject despite Therese’s hopeless quips. He finished his coffee with a flourish, mopping up the dribble that had escaped with his incredulous laughter.

“The real question here, though, does _she…”_

He wiggled his eyebrows conspiratorially, miming the action of hitting a baseball as Therese watched on.

“Does she bat for the same team?”

Therese groaned into her mug.

“It’s not a forbidden question, Dannie. You’re allowed to _ask_ without doing… that.”

He shrugged.

"Look, I haven't asked her and it'd be weird if I did.”

Dannie made a move to speak before he looked down at his watch, eyes widening.

“ _Shit._ Can you clean up breakfast? I’ll do dinner tonight if you want.”

There was barely time to nod as Dannie grabbed his suit jacket from the chair, sprinkling crumbs of toast as he went. He paused by the front door, just out of sight.

“Therese?”

She leaned backwards, catching his eye.

“Just… be careful, okay? With the blonde. She sounds great, I’m not denying that, but…”

He trailed off, a remorseful shrug tearing down the façade that his smile had been so dutifully holding up.

“You know what happened with Gen.”

The words stung, even though Therese knew how delicately Dannie had tried to release them. They _both_ knew what had happened with Gen, the event which had rendered her unable to speak for days, completely inconsolable for weeks. Even now, two months after the fallout, the thought still hurt her stomach — a gut punch where once, there were butterflies. She nodded, locking eyes with Dannie again. _I know,_ she mouthed, unsure why her words had made no noise. Perhaps she would have tried to sound out some other sentence to reassure them both, but as soon as the thought crossed her mind, Dannie was gone.

As the physical door shut behind him, another opened up somewhere deep in the archives of Therese’s mind, and it was all that she could do to hold back the tears that clawed at the back of her eyelids. How she longed for someone to hold her as she sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed. There was no-one, however, and Therese sat in the kitchen for quite a few more minutes after that, pleading with herself over and over not to break down.

* * *

The day passed almost as uneventfully as most other days usually did, save for a pigeon crashing into the living room window and scaring Therese absolutely shitless. Unperturbed, it had fluttered off, having caused enough of a distraction to enlighten Therese as to how lacklustre her book was. Gently, she placed it back onto the _L_ pile, holding it as it teetered before stepping back and praying that the domino effect didn’t decide to demonstrate itself in the meek confines of her apartment. Boredom tended to creep in on days like this, in moments like these, and here it unabashedly was, slinking in under the cracks of doors like smoke from a fire.

She looked around, her eyes finally settling on the collection of books that rested on the mantel. _The Book Thief_ sat, an ever-present taunt, on the edge of the row. The cavities where her nails had pressed still lay emboldened on the front cover and as she made her way over, her fingers down brushing against the paper. _I suppose you’ll have to buy this now._ Carol’s words flooded back into her ears and she sighed, letting the memory run from her nape to the small of her back.

She wondered, as she so often found herself wondering nowadays, whether the older woman would have been repulsed had Therese simply closed the gap between them and taken Carol’s lips in her own, nimble hands reaching up to cup the implausibly sharp line of her jaw. The thought was a maze and Therese was blissfully lost in it, clutching the novel to her nose and praying that the faint whiff of Carol’s perfume wasn’t simply a figment of her imagination. The battle was waged now, and Therese was tracing her steps back through that maze, fighting to find her way back to that intoxicating scent of everything that could possibly matter at this point.

The older woman hadn’t been perfumed by some generic mix of citrus or rose or lavender or, god forbid, coconut — it was instead the sheer _regality_ that gave way to her presence, the illustrious sort that came with fur coats and ballrooms and hotel suites. Therese wanted to bathe in it, to have it be the only thing she ever came into contact with from then on, and yet the looming fear that she had of Carol becoming someone _familiar_ quashed those thoughts like a toddler might a ball of play-dough. Familiarity and Carol Aird did not belong in the same sentence, no matter how hopelessly Therese wished that the words could one day fit together, somehow. She slipped the book back onto the mantel and rested her head delicately on the wall beside it. Something told her that no matter how well she got to know Carol, she would always carry that delicate air of mystery around with her like no person that Therese had had the fortune of meeting before.

A sigh found its beginnings in her chest and she ignored it, willing herself not to be completely devoured by the role of _wistful young admirer._ With the urge that came soon after to pick up the phone and call Carol, though, came the realisation. She had been that wistful young admirer ever since their eyes had first locked. As her fingers padded in the Aird household number that Therese had already memorised, the certainty grew — she could only hope that this story was not such a tragedy as the last romance she had played a part in. Across the state, a phone started to ring.

* * *

_You’ve reached the Aird residence. I can’t come to the phone right now — you know what to do._

The beep of the answer machine had startled Therese out of the reverie that Carol’s voice seemed to induce and immediately, her brain fumbled with all of the words she wanted to say.

“Um. Hi. It’s me — Therese.”

Suddenly, those words were being dropped with startling frequency, shattering on the ground and draining Therese of any cogent thought that she could possibly have come up with. The voice in her head tried desperately to piece together the fragments of her sentences, and for a few moments Therese went along with it, blurting out occasional non-verbal noises as if that were any better than silence. She cursed herself for the bumbling idiot that she never seemed to be able to stop making herself out to be, quietude finally circling back to drown out her random grabs at speech. Fifteen seconds passed with just her hurried breaths echoing down the line, before she tried out a sentence again.

“I really enjoyed our dinner.”

Of course, she had, but it was with a silent prayer that she begged herself not to say something closer to the subject of what she _really_ couldn’t stop thinking about, about how perfectly they slipped into each other’s arms, of how the whisper of Carol’s breath still haunted the top of her head. Once again, she waited to collect herself, another drawn out sentence.

“I can’t wait to see you again.”

A shorter pause.

“If you want to see me, I mean. You don’t have to… want to. See me. I don’t—"   
  
She sighed. Dear god, was this going wrong.

“Call me back, if you can.”

She held the phone to her ear for a few seconds more with the desperate hope that Carol’s voice might miraculously come flooding through the speaker. Silence awaited her, and she hung the phone up with a slightly shaking hand.

* * *

Carol shut her eyes as Therese hung up. She had heard every single word.

How desperately she wanted to call her back.

How terrified she was of the way Therese made her feel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens. I'm still figuring out whether I'm going to let Gen steal the limelight as the antagonist here, but it really depends on how she demands to be written. Either way, at least the mystery of the 'mysterious events of two months ago' has been solved. This could get interesting. Promising more Carol/Therese action next chapter, too. (Also, sorry to slander anyone who wears a coconut-themed fragrance — I had to find a scent to criticise and I promise, it's not targeted!)
> 
> – prestonsarchives


	6. Hyggelig I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW okay so it's currently 7:01am and I have been up, apparently, all night writing this chapter. Basically, the end result is nearly 6000 words long so I've decided to split it into two parts: Hyggelig I and Hyggelig II. Bear in mind that Hyggelig II is therefore already complete, so you can expect a new chapter within a week. They'll obviously have very similar names, though, so don't get them confused! I'm thinking about uploading Hyggelig II on Thursday or Friday so stay tuned for that! (Sorry if this entire chapter note makes no sense; I'm keeping myself awake on three espressos and a pack of cigarettes because I have to go into work in an hour — oops)
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading and stay tuned!

* * *

_Hyggelig (Danish) — a warm, friendly, cozy, delightfully intimate moment or thing._

* * *

“And you _didn’t_ pick up? Even though you were right there?”

Abby’s voice was fraught with a familiar mixture of exasperation and incredulousness and she leaned back into the sofa, balling up another roll of newspaper and throwing it in the general direction of the fire. Carol shrugged, tipping the last dregs of wine from her glass.

“I was tired.”

A raised eyebrow on her best friend’s behalf, seeing through the excuse as easily as if the blonde had simply held up a cellophane sheet and hoped that would do. She’d been doing this for all of the twenty-four years that Abby had known her, and today was no different. Another façade to draw slowly down.

“Too tired to… pick up a phone?”

The side-eye that Carol shot her was poisonous — all in good faith, of course — and Abby grinned, feigning innocence.

“Yes, Abby, too tired to pick up the phone. It was late.”

The interrogation had begun.

“What time was it?”

“Late.”

“How late?”

“Late enough.”

“And what counts as _late enough_?”

Carol was failing to mention that it had only been about midday — not late at _all_ — but pigs could only dream of flying if she was going to let that slip to Abby.

“Late enough that I don’t _remember,_ Abigail.”

Abby set both their wine glasses down on the table in front of them, scooting closer to Carol as the fire flickered on.

“Tell me about her.”

“I swear to god, Abby, I will throw _you_ into that fire if you ask me another question.”

“Not a question. An order. _Tell me about her._ ”

The room seemed to shrink as Carol racked her brains for something simple that she could say about Therese that wouldn’t lead to another round of this unorthodox third degree.

“She’s young. Brunette. Green eyes, but they can look darker sometimes in the right lighting. Small. She only comes up to just above my shoulders—”

Abby threw herself backwards, splaying herself exasperatedly out on the sofa.

“Jesus _Christ_ Carol, I’m not taking a police sketch. No offence to Thereese—”

“Therese.”

Abby’s eyes glinted, the speed at which Carol had come to this young woman’s defence a small but rather significant detail uncovered.

“What did I say?”

“The- _reeeese._ It’s The _rese.”_

“Fine. No offence to The _rese,_ but I couldn’t give less of a shit about what shade her eyes are in the _right lighting_. What’s she _like_?”

She sat up now, staring Carol down in a joyous standoff neither had seen coming.

“She’s… nice.”

Abby shifted as if to say something, a rebuttal against such a mundane word as _nice,_ before she realised how carefully Carol seemed to be choosing the next thoughts to say out loud. For the first time this evening, she held her tongue.

“But nice in a sort of contemporary way. She seems to just exist in perfect time with the rest of the world and it’s not something I’ve really seen much before.”

The fire crackled, and both women started. Abby was worried that the reverie had snapped with the wood, but judging by the look on Carol’s face, worry was not a necessary emotion.

“She collects books, too, in one of the most obscure ways I’ve ever seen before. Twenty-six piles around her house, stacked in alphabetical order but in a fashion that looks absolutely chaotic until she actually explains it to you. You have to be standing in the right place. I think that’s deliberate.”

 _She’s enthralled,_ Abby thought, the word eliciting a quiet pang of jealousy from the part of her that was still slightly _enthralled_ with Carol. A small part of her, though. She’d been ignoring it for this long and in the pursuit of her best friend’s happiness, she’d keep on ignoring it until it disappeared. Carol continued, her eyes sparkling in a way Abby didn’t know if she recognised.

“So is everything she seems to do. It doesn’t really seem like it at first but when you get to know her, it starts to show. She’s a different person up close.”

Carol’s eyes seemed to refocus as she glanced back down at Abby, shaking her head in a failed attempt at nonchalance.

“And that’s that, I suppose.”

Her mouth moved unnaturally around the syllables, as if there was so much more she wanted to say. A coaxing silence enveloped them for several seconds, the auburn-haired woman sitting as still as possible so as not to distract Carol from her spiel. The silence stretched, however, and it was clear that someone was going to have to say something to distract from the irony of past lovers discussing present infatuations.

“That’s that.”

The words were soft enough as they rolled from her lips that Abby wasn’t sure if the blonde had heard her. Not jealousy, so much as the slowly dissipating regret that she hadn’t fought for Carol. Seeing the hope that clouded her countenance at the thought of this The _rese,_ however, the thought occurred that melancholy togetherness wasn’t particularly worth fighting for, at all. This, this almost-happiness, could suffice.

“Call her.”

Carol’s eyes flew up from the hem of her shirt that she’d been toying nervously with, unsure for a moment as to whether or not she’d heard Abby right.

“I’m sorry?”

“Call Ther _ese._ Right now. Ask her to come over tomorrow.”

The reticent look in Carol’s gaze spoke volumes. She opened her mouth to decline Abby’s out of the blue offer, interrupted all too soon by an apparent method to her madness.

“Come _on,_ Carol. I bet Sappho has a poem on U-Haul lesbians written somewhere.”

The blonde paused.

"I don't know. What if she doesn't even want to be disturbed right now?"

Abby’s eyes flashed as she tugged Carol up towards the landline that she had so many times referred to as _dated_ and _anachronistic, so much clunkier than your mobile._ Here, suddenly, it was the holy grail.

“Only one way to find out.”

The line was already ringing. Carol drew her thumb across her neck in the universally appreciated notion of _I’m going to fucking kill you_ , but even she knew it was too late now to simply hang up and pray. Abby stood there, her hands practically clapping themselves together with glee. _Be nice,_ she mouthed, stepping back as if that put her out of either eyeshot or hearing range. It did not.

* * *

Therese’s hands fumbled as she went to pick up the phone. The number she had already memorised flashed up on the screen and for a terrifying moment she was convinced that she’d drop it and lose the only conversation she might have for days — she didn’t drop it, however, and all that was left to do was press the _accept call_ button. Three rings passed.

“Hello?”  
  
 _“Is this Therese?”_

* * *

 _Fuck._ Carol’s mouth went dry, her tongue hanging like a deadweight against her teeth. Therese answered her question, tentatively — _this is Therese, who’s calling?_ — and she glanced up at Abby, daggers morphing into pleas for help. _What do I say?_

Abby rolled her eyes, disbelieving that the woman she’d always thought as the very picture of sophistication was this powerfully tongue-tied. _Talk to her!_ She mouthed the words back, miming a chattering person with her right hand. The look she received back was so laced with sarcastic gratitude that it was difficult to believe one person could pack that much of _any_ emotion into a glance, and she grinned.

“Therese. It’s Carol. I—”

Carol hesitated, her mouth half-open, words trapped within. Abby made a surreptitious _keep going_ motion with her fingers as Carol stood, trying to summon up the words which would not come. The pause stretched in the same tense fashion that a rubber band might; much longer and the blonde was certain it would snap.

“I was wondering if… would you like to come visit me, this Sunday?”

 _Tomorrow!_ Carol was sure that Abby’s whisper-screech could have been heard in Mexico and she shot a dangerous look in her friend’s direction, shaking her head in a firm _no._ Tomorrow seemed to soon. Too clingy, perhaps. Their rendezvous could surely wait three more days.

The moment of hesitation that plagued the phone call drew a line of worry across Carol’s pale forehead. Abby watched it happen, engrossed in the effect this mysterious woman seemed to have on the blonde. Not even _she_ had been able to cradle Carol in such hopeful arms as Ther _ese_ now could.

_“Yes.”_

One word — _more_ than enough. Therese’s faint chuckle was audible after her ready proclamation, and for a moment Carol paused, deliberating the peculiar certainty of the answer. No _I’ll see if I’m free,_ no _give me a minute to check,_ just _yes_. Nothing else. _What a strange girl she is._

“Wonderful. I can come and pick you up, if you’d like, or you can make your way over on your own terms.”

Abby cringed, noticing the deliberate use of _wonderful_ rather than just _great,_ or _nice._ Was Carol putting up some sort of façade for Ther _ese_? In all the time — twenty-five years, now — that Abby had known her, despite Carol’s decidedly patrician upbringing, she’d never been one to mince words. They’d studied Orwell at school and the blonde had always stuck by one of his six rules of English — _never use a long word where a short one will do._ Wonderful. It was strange; her fascination.

“ _Oh no, it’s okay. I can just drive myself over. What’s your address, again?”_

As Carol rattled off the location that Abby knew all too well, the auburn-haired woman stole from the room, all too suddenly aware that perhaps this call was far more… precious, perhaps, than Carol was letting on. Outside, she grabbed the two wine glasses, tracing her finger around the rim of the one which — judging by the faint lipstick stains — was not her own. A small part of her — a jealous part? — deliberated warning Carol against this relationship. She was clearly in deep, now, after only having met up in person twice with this Ther _ese,_ and that same small part wondered who she’d really be protecting. _Carol, Therese, or myself?_

“Do you reckon you can keep out of my way for the whole of Sunday?”  
  
In the time that it had taken for Abby’s existential crisis to both find its roots and reach its climax, Carol had slipped back into the room. Her question was quite clearly a joke, delivered as it was with that familiar twinkle of those cerulean irises, and yet the phrasing still pricked a little as it stomped ungracefully across the carpet. _Keep out of my way._

“I’ll try mybest.”

Abby grinned, the sarcastic drawl that she was so used to dropping into sentences lingering around the syllables. It was futile, she knew, to try and get in the way of _anything_ Carol wanted — for now, it was all she could do to sweep her reservations under the rug. The desire that she had once felt so desperately for Carol was morphing now into desire to see her _happy,_ and it was all she could do to hope that Therese would be the solution that Abby had so yearned to be.

* * *

Therese’s car sat, stationary, in a foreign driveway. She’d stopped paying attention to the radio long ago, and it was only now that she tuned in to Katy Perry’s voice echoing quietly in through the speakers. _I kissed a girl and I liked it…_

Fitting. She twisted her keys out of the ignition, cutting the music off before she could hear any more about the cherry chapstick of the girl in question. Carol’s house loomed in front of her, a vast cream-bricked mansion that must have been at least a dozen times the size of her now-dwarfed Manhattan flat. The towering front door sat under three mullioned windows, a crenelated ‘porch’ of sorts that was just as likely to adorn this building as it was Baskerville Hall. The house — mansion, _castle_ — was, in so many ways, Carol; as mysterious as it was powerful, as timeless as it was bold. In the silence that the ticking engine left, Therese gawped. She’d known Carol was rich, but she hadn’t quite understood the reality of quite what _rich_ meant in this scenario — she was _loaded._ The kind of person Therese might have once taken a dislike to based solely on the sheer extent of her wealth. The gap between her and Carol seemed ever stretching and Therese ignored the tugging feeling that she had now grown accustomed to at any mention of the juxtaposition between Carol’s money and Therese’s… lack thereof. This house seemed not worthy of doing much but making her feel worse. _And she lives here alone?_

Sunday had come far quicker than anticipated — in between searching for jobs, Therese’s hours had found themselves stocked full of daydreams, and minutes seemed to pass just as quickly as seconds ever could. As an ironic reminder, the notification pinged through on her iPhone, flashing up at the top of her screen. _CAROL!!!!! (6pm!!)_ She smiled at the recollection of how efficiently she’d slammed down the landline and typed the date into her mobile, switching between phones as if it were an ordinary thing to do. The abundance of exclamation marks had simply seemed necessary at the time and as her stomach flipped now, it appeared that they still were.

Heaving a sigh, Therese pushed open the car door, strangely conscious of not making too much noise as if a ruckus might send the entire mansion tumbling down like an avalanche. Now that she was out into the open air, though, she realised just how still the atmosphere actually was — her seven month stint in New York had gotten her used to a constant background hum and here, without one, it came close to physically disturbing her. Not a single horn resounded through the silence. Not a single voice tore the thread. Her footsteps echoed as she made her way to the door, heartbeat the loudest thing for miles. She knocked, and the world startled with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully readers will be glad to know that I've got a basic plot mapped out for this story, and 32 chapters in the works — each one of 2500—5000 words, which could land me with a word count upwards of 100k by the end of things. Comments are welcome and incredibly appreciated, as always. Also, fair warning now, you might want to bring some tissues for the next chapter. See you all in about four days, I hope!
> 
> — prestonsarchives <3
> 
> Before I forget, though, in case anyone doesn't quite remember what it looked like, here's Carol's house ;)
> 
> https://www.ihearthollywood.com/2019/01/carols-house.html


	7. Hyggelig II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2, as promised. Hopefully this chapter answers some questions about Carol's state of entanglement.

* * *

_Hyggelig (Danish) — a warm, friendly, cozy, delightfully intimate moment or thing._

* * *

Carol had watched the way that Therese had almost tiptoed up to her house, bemused by the subconscious delicacy with which the younger woman seemed to apply to every situation. She’d been sat in this window-seat for almost half an hour now and the glee which filled her heart to see an unfamiliar car slide into the driveway was… disconcerting. At the sound of Therese’s careful knock, she stilled the anxious tapping of her nails on the windowpane, giving her reflection a once-over in the hallway mirror as she started down the stairs. She was doing less, today, in general — no lipstick, barely a touch of mascara, clad in some worn jeans and a cashmere jumper that slid off of her left shoulder. Whether the choice had been deliberate or not to expose her defined collarbones to Therese was a question Carol decided against answering, tightening her grip on the handle as she tugged the door open.

“Therese, hi. Come in.”

* * *

Carol’s collarbone, Therese decided, could have cut steel. _How can one woman be so perfectly defined?_ The question plagued her as she smiled nonchalantly up at the blonde, far too attached to the way Carol had said _hi_ rather than her usual _hello._ Was that a wall coming down or was that deliriously wishful thinking? God, it was getting hard to tell. Either way, the older woman was leaning against the doorframe in a fashion that could only have been described as relaxed, and the idea of Carol being _relaxed_ around her made Therese almost as excited as the shoulder that her sweater exposed.

_Jesus Christ, Therese. It’s a fucking shoulder._

Therese cleared her throat as she walked in, her breath catching once again at the sheer _vastness_ of the place from the inside. The ceiling seemed almost high enough to encase the expanse of her endlessly racing thoughts, and she peered up past the carpeted staircase at the house that was almost _too_ big to be called a home.

“Carol, your house is…”

Carol smiled a tired smile that she had clearly plastered on a thousand times before.

“Big? I know. It was nice, back when…”

 _Back when what?_ Therese glanced up as the older woman’s featured seemed to blank, the way her throat moved a clear demonstration of her swallowing down whatever she had been about to say.

“I’m selling it soon, hopefully. Got a new place lined up on Madison Avenue, and I should be in there by next February.”

The momentary lapse in countenance had caught both women unaware and Therese took a step closer to Carol, her green eyes searching quietly for what exactly had happened, back when.

“I never got to say thanks, for inviting me over.”  
  
Carol stilled, the panic in her features morphing back into easy appreciation for the subject change. She placed a careful hand on Therese’s arm, passing it off as a friendly gesture. A ruse which anyone, surely, could have seen through, had they not been so blinded by the feel of skin on skin.

“Don’t worry about it, darling. It’s the least I could do.”

Darling.

_Darling._

Therese paused, Carol’s fingertips still resting just above her elbow. This had clearly been something of a deliberate move — the older woman was regarding her with an air of caution that Therese hadn’t seen. The threateningly familiar warmth of a blush creeping up past her cheeks started to make itself apparent and in a bid to distract Carol, Therese moved her own hand to place it on top of the blonde’s.

“Still, it’s appreciated. I’m usually alone on Sunday nights.”

The air between them writhed, Carol’s gaze drilling into Therese’s as if to find a crack to exploit. There was nothing. With a distracted smile, Carol brought her arm back to her side, turning to the kitchen and releasing a breath she’d barely been aware of holding. Behind her, Therese cupped the fingers of her left hand in her right palm, inspecting them as if to find trace of the presence that was Carol. She was becoming rather fond of this new approach of theirs — testing waters, holding gazes, playing this tantalising waiting game.

“You staying for dinner?”

Carol paused and turned before she headed into the kitchen, her eyes feigning indifference, her posture playing at boredom. The single nail which tapped nervously against her jeans betrayed them both. An unspoken question found its way into Therese’s countenance, her eyes scanning Carol for an answer. _Do you want me to?_

A small, determined nod that could have been an accidental twitch in any other circumstance. _Yes._

“I’d love to.”

* * *

“You should really try it.”

Carol looked unconvinced.

“Seriously! It’s not as bad as everyone makes it out to be, I swear.”

The two women were sprawled in front of the coffee table, pizza boxes open and nearly empty in front of them. As it turned out, neither woman was a particularly skilled cook and it had taken them moments to decide that takeaway would be by far the easiest option. Carol had opted for sushi, Therese had gone for burgers and chips. Pizza was a welcome — if somewhat unprecedented — compromise. Therese, now, was dangling a piece of Hawaiian pizza in front of a decidedly anti-pineapple Carol, the grin on her face too hopeful to resist.

“Fine. But just so you know, pineapples belong in a piña colada, and I stand by that.”

It had gone 10pm, and they had finished a bottle of wine between them. Therese was clearly feeling the buzz of it, her cheeks slightly flushed with the stain that alcohol so notoriously left.

"Open sesame? Do people still say that?"

Carol obliged, slowly, her focus caught between the adorably determined look on Therese’s face and the pizza that she was about to be fed. Whether it was the tipsiness or the general air of comfort that they had both slipped into, proximity had increased and every so often Therese’s fingers would graze Carol’s thigh, lighting a match between both of them that Carol had been quick to put out with another sip of wine. At this point, she could barely tell if it was helping anything at all.

Therese leaned ever closer, her eyes fixed on Carol and her reaction to the stigmatised pizza. Her index finger brushed against the blonde’s lip as Carol finally allowed herself a taste, pineapple and tomato sauce clashing together in a wild flurry of flavours.

“So? Whaddya think?”

There was a slight slur to her words and Carol grinned, as if she could think about anything but the tip of Therese’s finger tracing the edges of her lips. _Do that again,_ she wanted to whisper — _would_ have whispered, had she been victim to just one more glass of wine, channelling her distraction instead to her reaction.

“It’s… interesting.”

“ _Interesting?_ Is that the _best_ you can do? Come on, make like a food critic and tell me how you _feel._ ”

 _Hopelessly aroused._ Carol tried to silence the thought — it got louder.

“I feel _divine,_ Therese.”

If Therese noticed the salacious edge to Carol’s words, she didn’t show it, instead pumping a fist into the air.

“I _told you_ you’d like it! See? It’s good!”

She offered the remaining fraction of the slice to Carol who smiled, turning it down on account of the fact that she was decidedly against Hawaiian pizza.

_I couldn’t give less of a shit about pineapples._

“Should I light a fire?”

Therese nodded eagerly, the excitement flooding her features.

“God yes. I haven’t sat in front of a fire in ages. Can I help?”

“Help… light a fire?”

“Or I can watch you. That’s just as good.”

Whatever that was supposed to mean, Carol didn’t have time to analyse — Therese jumped up, crumbs tumbling from her shirt as she pulled the blonde with her. Before long, the fire had been set and all there was left to do was to actually set it alight.

“Do you have a lighter? Or matches?”

Carol shot Therese a sarcastic look.

“No, I was planning on using my capabilities as a dragon to start it.”

“It wasn’t _that_ stupid a question.”

A shrug, a smile.

“Maybe not. Matches are on the chest of drawers in the drawing room, I think.”

Therese had no idea where the drawing room was. What the hell even was a drawing room? Nonetheless, she stood, wobbling on her way into the bold new expedition as Carol watched her go.

Moments passed.

“Therese?”

The lack of response didn’t worry Carol — it was a big house, and thick walls didn’t bode well for the travel of sound. She pulled herself up from her place by the hearth anyway, figuring that if Therese _was_ lost it would be in everyone’s best interest to find her. As was predicted, the drawing room was empty, matches sitting untouched on the drawers.

Far-end lounge, Carol guessed. It was where lost guests always seemed to end up for some reason, sitting at the very edge of the house as it did. The matches rattled in the pocket of her jeans as she walked in and Therese looked up, as startled as if she’d been doing something wrong.

“Everything okay?”

The brunette swallowed, motioning to shelf in the corner.

“Who are they?”

 _The photos._ Carol’s stomach dropped, her mind reeling with all of the possible lies she could make up as she had to all of the other people who had frequented the house in the last two year. Friends. Cousins. Pen-pals. Why lie? To Therese, at least. What, really, was the point?

“The man on the left… are you sure you want to know?”

Therese straightened up, an expression on her face that Carol couldn’t quite break through. Was it… hurt?

“He’s your husband.”

Carol paused, unused to anyone hazarding a guess and certainly not accustomed to them getting it right.

“And the girl’s… your daughter, I’m assuming?”

It was all that the blonde could do to nod. Therese seemed notably more sober than she had been minutes ago. The map that she had been so carefully charting, of Carol, of everything she thought Carol was — it vanished from her hands, disintegrating into an ashy substance and staining her fingers as it drifted away. A family. An entire atlas, rewritten.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Carol?”

The silence twisted between them like a lie.

“It’s… complicated.”

“But it’s not. It’s not complicated. You have a husband, and a daughter, and you neglected to tell me, this whole time. I wouldn’t call that complicated at _all_ , to be honest.”

Her words were so saturated with venom that Carol flinched. Outside, there wasn’t even white noise to distract them and Therese was reminded once more of the sheer _silence_ that this place was drenched in. When she spoke again, her words had softened.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you have a family?”

Carol steeled herself, her breaths speeding just slightly up in the quietude. The darkness shrouded them both, and part of her wished that she could switch a light on just to see the expression on Therese’s face.

“Had.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I _had_ a family.”

The quiet gasp that broke free from Therese’s throat made Carol realise that she didn’t need a light at all. Before the younger woman could start apologising, Carol crossed the room to grasp hold of Therese, to close the distance that didn’t need to be there at all.

“Can we talk about this… in the pizza room?”

Her hand closed around Therese’s, a thousand apologies streaming their way between them.

* * *

“I married Harge when we were twenty-five. I never loved him as I think I _should_ have done, but he knew that — I loved him as… a best friend, anyway. He loved me back, in a fashion that was equally as platonic, and that was all that it seemed we needed. For five years we lived like that, as married friends, and it worked. It was more of an agreement. _Should we do this with each other so we don’t have to do it with anyone else?_ ”

Carol glanced across at Therese to check that she was still listening. The brunette nodded, urging her on.

“And then we… we had a daughter. Another one of those agreements. To keep the parents happy, I think. As it turned out, though, even though we ourselves weren’t necessarily _in_ love, we loved Rindy with the exact same kind of affection as any other parents did. In a strange way she brought us together in a way that no marriage could have done. She was our world, and it sounds stupid, I know, but she _was…_ ”

A staggered breath. Almost a sob. Not quite. Not yet.

“And… and she was five when she got ill. Pneumonia. We were told it would pass, because she was healthy, because we’d taken such good care of her, but she just—”

This time, when she looked up at Therese, her eyes were glassed over. Pools of unshed tears sat just above her cheeks. Therese studied her for a brief moment, before lacing an arm around Carol’s shoulder, pulling her gently down into the sofa. For a while, in silence, they lay there, Carol kicking off her shoes to properly lie down. Her head came to rest on Therese’s chest, and eternities could have passed before she spoke again.

“She just kept on getting worse.”  
  
And now she did sob, hiding her face in Therese’s shirt as she pulled her tighter. She remembered, here, suddenly, far too suddenly, the strain of a three-night stint in a new hospital, the catch in Harge’s voice every time anyone asked about their daughter, the hope, that _awful_ hope, that dissipated every day until all that was left was a writhing pile of broken promises. In the end, it had been acceptance. _There’s still a chance that Rindy can pull through,_ the doctors would say. _No, there isn’t,_ her mind started to reply.

“I’m sorry, this is—”

“No. No it’s not. It’s brave, Carol. It’s so, so brave.”

Seconds passed, two women lying on a sofa, as intertwined as lovers might be. Carol took a breath as Therese stroked a thumb up and down her shoulder.

“And then we woke up, Harge and I, one day… we were in the hospital, of course, because towards the end we never really left. We couldn’t. We couldn’t leave our Rindy.”

Therese reached her spare hand down to cup Carol’s cheek, her thumb swiping away a tear with gentle consideration.

“Nobody had called us, we were just sitting in the waiting room… but we both sat up. At exactly the same time. It was 3:51am. And he looked at me…”

* * *

_“Carol?”_

_“Harge?”_

_The bleak lights of the hospital shone unforgivingly down onto two faces still mussed with sleep. A moment of understanding passed between them both, and a sob found its roots deep in Carol’s chest. They said it at the same time. A name. A wish. An answer._

_“Rindy.”_

* * *

“And we knew.”

Carol fought back another sob.

“She was gone.”

Therese leaned down to kiss the crown of Carol’s head, just as Carol looked up. Their faces were inches from each other, suddenly. Therese could feel the whisper of the blonde’s breath on her lips.

“She didn’t deserve that, Therese. She was _so_ good. Always said please, and thank you, and she was just learning to read, and she had so much life in her, she didn’t deserve—”

She buried her head into Therese’s chest again, tears soaking the fabric through. _She didn’t deserve to die._

“I loved her.”

 _And you lost her._ Therese would never have said it, but here was the reason for the barriers that Carol had so carefully constructed. She couldn’t afford to love, because she couldn’t afford to lose. She didn’t know _how_ to love, anymore.

“Harge disappeared into himself, after. I did, too, but not quite… not quite like him. He wouldn’t come outside, not even to the funeral, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t drink. Losing her broke both of us, but it _shattered_ him.”

She looped her arms under Therese, pulling them closer, always.

“It was only a few weeks later, he’d… he’d been drinking. Hadn’t eaten anything for three days, barely got a glass of water down — and he drank half a bottle of whiskey. The police were surprised he could even see straight enough to get in the car.”

 _The car._ Carol nodded into Therese’s chest as if to confirm her suspicions.

“He crashed. Ploughed into a tree. The car we had — a Porsche — it was too fast to leave him any hope of survival, and I think he knew that. Within a month, I’d lost two of the only things that could ever matter to me.”

“Carol… I—”

Carol pressed a single finger to Therese’s lips, pleading.

“Don’t be sorry. Please, don’t be sorry. There are so many people out there who _say_ they’re sorry, and I just… for what? _They_ didn’t crash the car. _They_ didn’t give my daughter pneumonia. They just exist. They have nothing to be sorry for, and they say it anyway. It’s like they’re _bragging,_ sometimes. _Sorry that you have to go through this, and I don’t. Sorry that you lost your entire family when I’ve still got three kids and a loving husband.”_

She let out a shuddering sigh, clenching her hands into fists.

“Don’t be sorry. Just be here.”

Therese nodded, this time succeeding in pressing a lingering kiss to Carol’s head. The blonde whimpered into her, pressing ever tighter into her chest.

“I’m here.”

_You won’t lose me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts?


	8. Merak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! I'm back at work (actually at work, rather than online) and it is hectic out there — very sorry for the slow update but I'm afraid this might be the sort of pace that I'll be writing at up until around Christmas, probably. Anyway! I've got a new book on the go — The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje — and it's absolutely gorgeous; I can't recommend it enough. (One of the main characters also happens to be my namesake, which was a nice surprise.) Happy reading!

* * *

_Merak (Serbian) —_ a wonderful little word that refers to a feeling of bliss and the sense of oneness with the universe that comes from the simplest of pleasures.

* * *

_I lost someone, too._

How could Therese possibly bring up her own baggage in light of everything that Carol had just told her? The last thing she wanted to do was fashion some sort of sick competition out of this. _You lost your family? Well, I lost the love of my life so suck on_ that. Obviously, she’d never dream of phrasing it like that, but that would be the inevitably linked connotation, surely? The thoughts plagued her far past the fire going out; far, even, past Carol’s breaths beginning to deepen as the blonde slipped into a dreamless sleep. The two women were still intertwined on the sofa, and the fact that Carol had made no move to… well, _move,_ spoke to Therese in a language she’d never been able to quite understand before. Carol’s own love language, perhaps. God save anyone who ever tried to write _that_ dictionary. It had likely gone midnight by the time her eyes finally shut, the only solace from the cynicism of her own brain trapped in the feeling of Carol’s arms wrapped around her.

Occasionally, one woman would shift slightly, and the other would move to accommodate the change in position. Throughout the entire night, though, they remained laced around each other; fingers linking, noses brushing, each insignificant point of connection coming together to build the raft that fought against the tides of two unsteadily shifting worlds.

When Therese opened her eyes again, it felt almost as if she’d never been asleep at all, and yet there was sunlight streaming in through the curtains; there was the weight of Carol on her chest. Tonight was the first night in weeks that she’d slept entirely through, undisturbed by those incessant nightmares that seemed determined to send her duvet flying from the mattress in a flurry of jolts and screams. Carol was the breeze-block, it seemed, that kept her tied down in a realm far from that of bad dreams. Just peace. Just sleep.

Carol stirred, the curve of her jaw pressing into Therese’s abdomen. Her grip tightened behind Therese’s back and it occurred to the brunette that maybe she wasn’t the only one being anchored to reality right now. She was so peaceful when she was sleeping — the hard lines and cool indifference that Therese had come to associate with Carol were gone, replaced only by a faintly twitching smile and an impossible softness that surrounded them both.

“Morning.”

Minutes later, Carol’s voice — muffled as it was — stumbled into the silence, her gaze lifting to catch Therese’s in the grand stillness of everything else. She seemed to clock the situation all at once, her eyebrows flying up almost as quickly as the rest of her body as she untangled herself from the mess of loops and knots that was Therese.

“Oh god. I’m so sorry. You must have been suffocated all night, Therese. Why didn’t you wake me?”

She was already standing up, her eyes squinting with the muted effects of last night’s wine, panic swarming her features as she hurried around the room picking up boxes and bottles and glasses and, in Therese’s eyes, any evidence that last night had happened at all. _It wasn’t deliberate. Of course it wasn’t. She doesn’t feel like that, for you._

At something of a loss for words, Therese watched Carol rush out, and then listened to the hurried clang of an opening bin in the kitchen as all traces of _anything_ they’d shared were pushed down into the rest of the week’s old food. A part of her had expected this — at least, a part of her had known to expect a different reaction from Carol than might be anticipated — because of the enigma that the older woman had so frequently proved herself to be. She came back into the room apologising, flustered in a way that Therese had never seen before. As it turned out, there was a lot of Carol that she’d never seen before.

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have had so many glasses, oh _god_ , did I stain your shirt? Dragging you down with all of that wasn’t the plan, I swear, I’m so sorry—”

Finally reaching for her senses behind clouded vision, Therese stood, wincing for a moment before catching Carol’s panicked stare in her own. For once, she was in control.

“You’ve said ‘I’m so sorry’ three times now. You have nothing to apologise for.”

Carol looked from the ground, a smile playing behind her eyes.

“I _do,_ though. I...”

She let out an embarrassed laugh.

“I got us both drunk, dumped a sob story into the mix and then passed out _literally_ on top of you.”

Therese shook her head, taking a step closer. A moment passed between them before she reached to skim her thumb against the edge of Carol’s palm. In an unintended reaction, Carol pushed her hand into Therese’s, linking their fingers as if it were a habit. As if it ever could be.

“It was more than a sob story, Carol.”

Avoiding the implications of what Therese had said — _you trusted me with that much —_ Carol tugged on an embarrassed grin.

“You must think I’m awful.”

For the first time, Therese saw through the charade. That casual play at nonchalance which was ordinarily so easy to go along with.

“No. Not at all. That first meeting in the bookshop was enough to convince me that nothing about you is awful. God, you were so put together it was almost scary.”

She didn’t need to ask if Carol remembered the encounter. How could either of them ever forget it?

“I’m different around you, Therese. That _is_ scary. I’ve known you — what — thirteen days?”

_She’s been keeping count._

“And the person you met, the one who… wears velvet gloves, and unironically winks at people, and asks strangers what they dream about… all of that — she’s the person that everyone who knows me, sees. The _picture of sophistication_.”

She spat out the words, Therese noticed, as if being the most elegant woman alive was a curse. What was it _like,_ upholding that persona, day in, day out? Could Carol ever really be anyone else?

“The person who breaks down after four glasses of wine in another person’s lap... I don’t know. I have no idea who that version of me, is.”

She tailed off, her hand still in Therese’s.

“Thirteen days and half a bottle does something to a woman, apparently.”

Therese couldn’t disagree; when she’d first encountered Carol in the bookshop, it came close to being off-putting how suave she was. She hadn’t seen that at the time, though, as enthralled as she’d been, as enthralled as she still was; but this side of Carol was perhaps even more captivating than the one she’d met. Something had changed, last night.

“I… quite like this version, actually.”

Carol glanced up, surprise joining the battle against the shame that clouded her features. She gave a half-hearted attempt at a shrug, her gaze now stumbling down to their interlocked hands. The younger woman moved slightly closer again, hoping that Carol couldn’t feel the pulse that raced through her fingertips.

“You do?”  
  
A piece of Therese’s heart crumbled, so shocked as Carol was that anyone could feel anything towards the parts of her which weren’t ‘perfect’. What the hell was perfect, anyway?

_Carol is._

“I do.”

A pause, as each woman drew impossibly closer to the other, lips parting, eyes searching.

“We were… you stayed with me? Through the whole night?”

There it was — that same hopeful vulnerability that Therese had only seen traces of since last night. _Of course I did._ Where else could she ever have wanted to be?

“Carol…”

There were _so_ many things Therese could have said. Too many things. Her head ached with the possibilities.

“Therese.”

Their lips were centimetres apart. The brunette’s free hand came up to press against Carol’s cheek, shock registering in her eyes before she melted almost imperceptibly into the caress. Her jaw moved as if to speak, words forming that Therese already knew the answer to.

_Can I kiss you?_

A breath, a nod, a certainty.

“ _CAROL!”_

* * *

The reverie shattered. Carol stumbled backwards, her head snapping towards the noise just as Therese reversed inadvertently into the coffee table with a thud. Apologetic glances were thrown between the two, harmony morphing into dissonance as the front door shut.

_Abby._

“Right, Sunday’s been and gone and I managed to keep out of your hair but unless you two slept together, I’m assuming you’re free to play a violently unfriendly game of monopo—”

Up until the third syllable of monopoly, Abby’s voice had been resounding in from the front corridor, and it was only as she rounded the corner that she finally paused. Maybe paused isn’t the word for it — when she first clocked the two women, it was like she’d hit a brick wall. Her eyes flitted first to Therese, the brunette’s face ever so slightly flushed, and then to Carol, wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing when they FaceTimed yesterday.

“Oh my god.”

Carol sighed, figuring that she’d correct any assumptions later on. She gestured vaguely at Abby.

“Therese, meet Abby. My best friend of almost twenty-five years. Abby, meet Therese.”

She glanced surreptitiously at Therese and then _very_ deliberately at Abby.

Therese cleared her throat at Carol’s as Abby’s eyes narrowed, a grin breaking out from behind her suspicion before she could stop it. Monopoly in hand, she plonked herself down on the sofa.

“So _this_ is the mysterious Therese.”

She gave the brunette a once-over, smirking at Carol in the most obvious possible fashion before she stuck her hand out.

“Nice to finally meet you, _Therese_. You’ll be glad to know that I’ve heard _so_ much about you.”

It was Therese’s turn, this time, to shoot a playful look at Carol as the older woman stood, gobsmacked. Finally, Abby let her off the hook, slapping a hand down onto the board game in front of her and jolting the room out of its thickening silence. She didn’t miss the heart-eyes that Carol was giving Therese, but for once, resigned any related comment.

"What's your take on Monopoly?"

* * *

“Two thousand dollars and a _win_ , if you wouldn’t mind.”

Therese winced as she handed over the last of her money, all of her assets gone. This was the third time she’d landed on Mayfair — the most expensive property in the game — and Abby was _loving_ it. Carol was long out, her head resting on the back of the sofa as she watched the women battle. Every so often, her knee would shift ever so slightly to the left, knocking gently against Therese’s. She would note the way the brunette’s eyes would widen for a moment, a dice roll faltering, a play delayed. Abby wasn’t the only one enjoying this game.

“God, people aren’t joking when they talk about this game lasting a century. How long’s it been?”

Carol tugged her watch out from under a cashmere sleeve, hand brushing against Therese’s thigh.

“It’s almost two.”

Four hours, had passed, somehow, the three women revelling in each other’s company for just as long. Therese had taken just as much a liking to Abby as Abby had taken to her, the occasional burst of raucous laughter on her best friend’s behalf warming Carol’s heart through. She adored this casual domesticity almost as much as she’d loved the look on Therese’s face every time someone had landed on one of her properties — glee, in a form almost childish for how wonderful it was. Therese leaned backwards, now, heaving a contended sigh as she watched Abby count the riches she’d amassed. Her head rested accidentally against Carol’s arm, outstretched on the back of the sofa as it had been. Both women stiffened for a moment until the younger woman leaned further into Carol, her gaze never faltering from directly ahead. Slowly, and as cautiously as if to avoid waking someone from sleep, Carol curled her arm around Therese, her fingers coming to lie on the brunette’s shoulder. When Abby glanced up from the fake money she’d been flicking through, she paused, taking in the look of absolute bliss on Carol’s features as she gazed down at Therese, the way that they both seemed almost unaware of the way they seemed to be holding each other together, tucked into their own quiet corner of the world.

Feeling almost intrusive, she glanced back down, smiling quietly to herself. This almost-happiness. This would be enough. _Especially_ since she’d won monopoly, although with the way Carol had been basically donating her money to Therese throughout the game, it had only ever really been a one-in-two chance.

“So.”

It was, unexpectedly, Carol’s voice which broke the silence, Therese jolting slightly beside her.

“Who’s staying for dinner?"

Abby waited to reply until Therese had — “I’ve got to get home to Dannie, sorry,” — watching cautiously as the Carol’s smile faltered, just slightly.

“Abby?”

She shrugged.

“Not like I’ve got anywhere else to go.”

* * *

Therese stayed for another hour after, settling into herself as Abby took up most of the conversation with scandalous memories from high school, college, and the days beyond. She took particular delight in recalling the campus-wide game of ‘tag’ that their university had somehow allowed, divulging to Therese every single detail of Carol’s feature at the winner’s table.

“I didn’t even know she had it in her — god, you wouldn’t even come near _me_ for the entire three weeks. Even _after_ I’d been body slammed by some guy in the year above and was most _definitely_ out of the game.”

Carol grinned, revelling in her notoriety.

“You couldn’t trust anyone. For all I knew, you’d signed a deal to lock me in the dorm room or something.”

Abby rolled her eyes as Therese laughed quietly, the air warm with the kind of mirth that usually took weeks of small talk to find. It was a strange happiness that filled her at the thought of getting along with Abby, so well, so quickly — a gleefully twisting thing that tugged a smile across her face even in moments of passive absent-mindedness where there usually wouldn’t have been much to see at all. _I’ve made a friend,_ and the thought was childish but it was _true —_ she knew, now, what Abby’s face looked like in uncontrollable laughter. She could recognise the way her eyes creased and her hand came up to shield her mouth, the way she would rock backwards and then again forwards in time with the bout of giggling to come and go. Therese would have been smiling even where there was nobody to see her, even in darkness, even without Carol. Today, she thought, as she glanced down at the watch with an unfamiliar sense of foreboding, had been an excellent day.

“You’ve got to go?”

Carol had seen the look, and when Therese turned to nod a confirmation, their faces were close.

“Unfortunately. Dannie’ll probably be throwing a fit back home.”

A flicker of something across the blonde’s face — _jealousy?_ — and then a smile as she slapped her palms to her thighs.

“That’s that then. You’ll be okay to drive back into the city?”

Abby smirked. Overprotective Carol was fun to watch, and it was ever more the spectacle when Therese slid a ‘comforting’ hand onto Carol’s knee.

“I’ll be okay.”

And with the contemporary newness that Abby had only so far heard in description, Therese drew herself up, steps like a ballet dancer’s as she stole from the house — an echo. An existence. Carol’s eyes seemed trained on the space that the younger woman had filled — where her bag, her shoes, her thoughts, had been — and it was only as the front door slipped casually shut that she turned to look at Abby. The expression itself wasn’t sheepish, and yet there was sheepishness there.

“Tell me you know what you’re doing.”

Carol laughed, despite the tenderness that Abby’s voice had encompassed.

“I don’t.”

She stretched out the _I_ as if it were a statement within itself — _I_ don’t, but does anyone? — and it shifted like an unrolling carpet out into the air around Abby. Not a statement. A contemplation. To admit, or not to admit, to the steady disassembling of herself into Therese? The truth, she had decided, in the milliseconds that had passed.

“I never did.”

And it was Abby who she glanced up at now, her eyes searching, her thoughts finding. There was no plosivity to her words, and even the hardness of the ‘ _d’_ s were softened out like wood into ash, slipping from her lips just the same as a whisper might come.

“Abby?”

The lack of response merely an invitation to continue. That was how it was with Carol. She would answer to silence as if its sheer quiddity was a question, more readily than to any human interaction.

“What happens if…”

Therese’s car started out on the driveway, and the rolling crunch of gravel stole the silence from between the two women until the quietude had returned again. Carol seemed to droop with the brunette’s absence, but perhaps it was with the weight of what she had yet to say.

“If this goes wrong?”

She edged around the question, for fear, mostly, of the experience that Abby had with its answer. _What happens if Therese breaks my heart like I broke yours?_ Ironic, and yet Abby could tell that even through the monopoly game, Carol had been waiting to ask this. The change in mood wasn’t sudden, nor unexpected — it was here, and it was as Carol-esque as anything else that either woman could have predicted. Was it even a change in mood, any more than it was just a lack of Therese? Questions. So many of them, and yet Abby was faced with just one.

“You fall apart.”  
  
She put it simply, a punchline — and one that hit Carol just as hard as a punch would have done.

“And it takes you a _million_ times longer to put yourself back together than it does to break in the first place, but you will. You heal. You move on.”

A weak smile; a smile enough.

“You move on?”

“You do.”

Barely a lie. Scraping the edge of the truth like pen to hesitant journalist’s paper, because so much more was entailed in moving on than either could hope to talk about. Abby hadn’t — Carol wouldn’t. And on this winding trail stretches; scrawled notes in margins, sheets ripped out of a steadily thickening book.

Carol knew, though, as well as her face shielded the doubt in her head — she wouldn’t. There would be no moving on from Therese Belivet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abby... cock-blocked them? Is there a female version of that? Anyway, let me know your thoughts if you want to!! Comments are always so very appreciated and I love hearing what everyone has to say!


	9. Jijivisha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning here; substance abuse and references to self-harm.

* * *

_Jijivisha (Hindi) —_ the strong, eternal desire to live and to continue living.

* * *

Christmas was approaching. The thought struck Therese as if Christmas wasn’t always approaching anyway, just the same as all of the other insignificant dates in the year. Even then, accompanying it came that childish excitement that seemed to come with the holiday — as if this year would be any different from all the others. She hadn’t known Dannie this time last year, and her Christmas had been spent with a cold takeaway pizza and some rice she’d thrown into the meal on a whim, before she’d glanced at her phone and realised what day it was. There was a vague memory that lay somewhere in her head of tugging on a scarf and a coat over her pyjamas and sitting in the church for the evening sermon in a show of tradition she didn’t even have — and that was Christmas. Alone, in a crowd.

She would’ve liked to say that something felt different this year, except for the fact that she’d said that every time this holiday had rolled around, and not much changed. Nothing, really, in the grand scheme of things. Dannie would likely invite her to a party and buy her a book or some jewellery, she would decline one and dutifully accept the other — respectively — he would shoot her a worried glance but nothing more would likely come of it. Christmas had always been lonely for her, she just didn’t like to admit it, falling every time into the trap of jingling music and advent calendars lining the shelves. Excitement. As the cynic inside her would undoubtedly be source of constant reminder, all Christmas was, was corporate doing its job. And still, the rogue thought — _maybe this year_ will _be different._ If the light pollution in New York wasn’t too stifling to see any trace of shooting stars, perhaps she would have wished on one.

The week passed, barely. What little sleep Therese had been able to steal from the discomfort of nightfall was plagued, now, with Carol, with her lips, her eyes, her voice, her. _Her._ A dream, but hardly — more of a retelling of the morning they had shared; the moment. The almost-kiss.

_Was it really that?_

The worry struck, now, as repetitively as the image of Carol that fluttered behind her eyelids (and the Christmas songs) — was she reading any more into this than she should be? Proximity was close, certainly, and _something_ had been about to happen ( _was it?_ ) but there remained to be no way of knowing, since nothing _had_ happened, after all. She could hardly complain — dreaming about Carol wasn’t exactly the epitome of all things bad. They’d shared two calls, across the seven days that had stretched out, somehow, into a week, and while each was filled with that effortless mirth that she simply seemed to _have,_ with Carol, gone was the burning chemistry she’d thought they shared before. Outside of her room, of her thoughts, the front door shut — Dannie, leaving for work. The stony silence that had taken over their apartment frustrated her, and yet riding on those vaguely angry coattails was the fear that kept her from completely sorting out the issue.

* * *

_Seven days earlier_

Therese pushed the door shut behind her, squinting as a rogue ray of sunlight slipped between the complex in front of their building and jabbed her in the eye as she came in. The first thing she noticed was Dannie, his head shooting up from where it had been looking at his phone, his face flushed, his eyes on fire.

“Thank god. Thank _god._ Where were you?”

It was safe to say that Therese hadn’t been expecting this onslaught — she’d left her phone alone for less than a day — and as Dannie hurried over, whatever tension he was feeling was suddenly hers to carry with him.

“I’m fine, Dannie.”  
  
The words didn’t seem to make their way through to him at all as he grabbed her wrists, tugging back sleeve and checking both arms for — _for what?_ She knew that Dannie was one to be overprotective but it was almost _violent,_ the way he tugged her limbs forward, searching her as if he had some sort of right to, as if it wasn’t this mortifying thing. Therese snatched her hand back, now, eyebrows drawing together as she pulled her shirt sleeve back down to where it had been resting on the palm of her hand.

“Jesus, Dan, I said I was okay.”

He huffed a sigh, throwing his own arms up in some show of exasperation she’d only seen in fragments before.

“How was I supposed to know that, T?”

Bewilderment leaped out of the way as indignance charioted its way into Therese’s head, her forearms still burning from where he’d grabbed them. Silently, with Dannie’s eyes so painstakingly tracing her movements, Therese took out her phone for the first time since yesterday, mouth falling ever so slightly open as she flicked through the notifications. Twenty-three missed calls, all his. _Forty-one_ texts, each laced with increments of gradually building frenzy until _THERESE???? Where are you??? Call me when you get this. Please. Please, T._

She could sense the worry in his words but still, barely a night had passed and this was _way_ too much protectiveness for the amount of time that had slipped by.

“Why aren’t you at work?”  
  
The question which had served initially as a way of driving the conversation away from where it was served only to worsen things, Dannie’s nostrils flaring as he took in a sharp breath.

“I called in sick. _”_

This time, it was Therese’s turn on the eye-roll.

“What, in case I turned up dead? I was barely gone a day. Leave it alone.”  
  
A quick choice of words. The wrong decision.

“ _Leave it alone?"_

He spat out the words, and Therese felt their venom burning into her skin. This — she couldn't do this right now.

"Where were you?

Therese took a step back, shoving her phone back into her pocket and making the move to storm past him. As she walked, though, he stepped to the left, his movements almost saturated in the anger he was already steeped in. A blockade. _What right does he have to be angry?_ For a moment Therese cowered, her head jarring back as her hands came out in front of her, and she watched as a flash of what might have been apology darted across the way Dannie was stood.

“What exactly is it that gives you impression that you have any right to know?”

The words were quiet, and as calculated as she dared let them be.

“The blonde.”

“— _Carol.”_

Shit. That moment of correction, that almost-instinct — a tell.

“So it was her.”

Therese turned, slamming a hand into the aged wood of their front door, watching as flakes of paint rained down around her like ash.

“Please,” and her words were softer than the movement had alluded to. 

She twisted again to face him, eyes pleading.

“Please, can we not do this right now. _”_

Dannie started, the vein that ran down the side of his neck bulging in the same way Therese’s father’s used to.

"Then _when,_ Terri?"

 _That's not my name._ She was exhausted. _Never_ wasn't an option, but she could hope.

The silence surprised her, and her throat ached with the heaviness of it as Dannie threw his hands up for the second time, empty of the protectiveness that had swallowed him before.

“Great."

Gone was the malice from his words, and this time he made no move to stop her as she stole past him, kicking over a pile of books — the _T_ stack, one of the biggest she had — and letting the noise jar them both as she slammed her bedroom door shut. There were no locks on these doors and he winced as the scraping of her chair into the space underneath the handle reverberated through the room. More than a sinking feeling — a completely submerged feeling, a _drowning_ feeling — filled him as he crossed the threshold, hands shaking while he knelt to restack the pile of books. This was about as close as they'd come to a full-blown argument, and it took three attempts before the tower was built up again.

* * *

_Two months ago — two weeks post-Gen._

Dannie had known to be worried about the business trip. A week of leaving Therese in her state, and yet his job — their rent — depended on it. He’d enlisted Phil to come in and check on her, knowing at the back of his mind that his buffoon of a brother was making nothing but empty promises, and ignoring the pang. He’d rushed from the airport as if it could make a difference, those minutes, rather than the entire week he’d been gone.

The stench — of alcohol, and vomit, and ( _oh god, he thought, because there was no mistaking the metallic smell he could recognise from one too many nosebleeds as a kid_ ) was overwhelming, as soon as he got out of the lift. The pit in his stomach roiled, bags dropped and forgotten entirely as he charged towards the locked door.

“ _Therese?_ ”

No answer. _No answer._ He didn’t have to feel his pulse to know the speed of his heart, blood racing rings around his veins as his shoulder collided with wood. The key, the _fucking_ key, buried somewhere at the bottom of one of his three bags, lost among shirts and documents and all of his possessions that were completely and utterly useless as he slammed the entire left side of his body again into the door. By the third horrifying crunch, neighbours were appearing, peeking out of their own homes in a rare show of concern that New York occasionally showed. The first person to put two and two together was a man neither Dannie nor Therese had interacted with before, and yet the sheer, unabashed humanity of the situation was enough to send this stranger careering into the door.

Dannie glanced at him, a silent look of _so_ many thanks, his eyes filling with unwanted tears before he was carted back into reality, Therese’s name falling again from his mouth. Falling — flying. He screamed the syllables, and the nameless man shouldered his way into the wood again. Days later, this same stranger would be the one to convince the landlord that the broken door was absolutely _not_ going to go on Dannie’s rent, but that didn’t matter now. It couldn’t. It was Dannie and his now-aching collarbone who finally ripped the door off its hinges, incoherent nothings tripping into the air that he himself couldn’t understand — couldn’t _hear,_ over the deafening ringing that came with such adrenaline as this. _Therese_ , he yelled, probably, feet clashing into empty bottles and hands thrown out in front of him as he tripped into what was quite possibly the kitchen table.

If the smell had been bad out there, it had worsened tenfold in here, boiling in Dannie’s throat and sending him gagging into the sink. _Therese, Therese, Therese,_ and in the end it was the stench that drew him to her, tumbling into the light switch and regretting it, regretting it, regretting it. The bathroom. White tile, stained brown and yellow and red, bile and blood flowing in rivers away from her body, pooling already at his shoes. He could clean them, and even if he couldn’t, who cared, _who cared,_ because there her eyes were and he could work out from the movement of her mouth that she was apologising already, even if her stare was vacant, even if her gaze kept tripping down to the rivulets of red that stormed from her wrists, too deep, so far too deep, as if she couldn’t believe they were there at all.

He ran to her, cradled her, screamed and screamed until another almost-stranger, (and _god_ , how beautiful he was realising the human race could be) braved the smell, charging in with the emergency services already on the line, a doctor, or at least someone with a strong head, Dannie presumed, from the way she had already torn strips from her shirt and was wrapping them around Therese's wrists, checking her eyes, measuring her responses. Her head dipped and she was sick again, except this time, unconscious, and it was all Dannie could do to drag her over to the bath, feeling more than seeing the way her body curled into the tub, retching and writhing as he clutched at her, the porcelain jutting into his ribs.

She fell back into him and he fell back with her, head smacking into the bathroom wall as her blood stained the sweatpants he’d worn on the plane. The plane, which was suddenly a lifetime away. Her lifetime, he realised, if he couldn’t save her. The world was a blur, and spinning, and fading, and Therese shuddered against him as another wave of nausea left him covered in sick, too. He didn’t care — he couldn’t — because what was this, except his fault? Vaguely, he recalled the shape of someone else running into bathroom — was it his mother’s name that he called? — the dull throb of his head and his shoulder both too distracting suddenly to overlook. He pressed a hand to where his skull had collided with the wall — it came away damp, but whether that was his blood or hers there was no way to know. He would never leave again — he swore it, then, pressing a terrified kiss to Therese’s brow. Not ever. Not ever, not ever, not ever, and the rhythm carried him into unconsciousness until the ambulance came.

That was almost three months ago, now, and from there, Therese spent thirty days under observation in the hospital — it was November 1st, the day she'd finally come home. The day she had come home, and _he_ vowed never to leave again. It was December 21st, now, and his hands still shook to think of it all. 

* * *

And then it was Carol, because it would always be Carol — across the city, as she was, across worlds, as she could convincingly have been. Her head was in that familiar space between boredom and fatigue; she could feel her eyelids considering their inevitable closing, and yet the action was yet to haunt the edges of her expression. The city was alive, in the distance, a shattered mass of lights that flickered on and off, too far to appear as anything other than stars against the horizon. Nights like this, cocooned in the silence that she could never _quite_ get used to — they were the nights she found herself wishing that Madison Avenue would hurry itself up. The background noise that she used to tire so easily of seemed like solace, now, suddenly. Or maybe it was just the city itself. _Maybe it’s Therese._

The idea came in fragments, sliding itself in its perfect increments through each unguarded alley that her mind seemed to be made up of, until it was a flood, a storm, a tidal wave — and she welcomed it. No barriers up, now. Just Therese, feeling like solace, apparently.

This house, and its god-forsaken memories, hollowed sobs etched into the floorboards, scars carved into the roof — nothing lived in these halls, except for her. Her, but barely. She remembered Harge picking out the wallpaper, the carpet, summers and summers ago, his eyes alight with all that the season was bringing to them. Stretching days, softened nights, sunrises and sunsets that they were both awake to see. And Rindy. Always, always, Rindy. He had ended up choosing a carelessly dark palette for the house’s interior, blind to all but the suffused brightness that his daughter supplied them both. He fell in love the way the ashy marble reflected her light, the way its slick surfaces caught fire as she passed. Of course, he did not consider how black it would be when she was gone. Harge had never been able to imagine a world without Rindy in it.

Divine days fell like water from a cataract, and none of the house’s three inhabitants had yet learned the mortal trick of counting them.

Carol blinked, tears spilling down past her cheeks that she hadn’t been remotely aware of. The worst kind of sob — the silent kind. The kind which feels like loneliness. Her eyes traced the ground below her seat, traced the path that Rindy had taken come her first unstable steps. She’d forgotten, it had been this room. Harge standing with a camera in his joyously shaking hands, the footage useless once he had ditched the device entirely in his flight across the room to Rindy, to her bubbling laughter, to her tiny, reaching hands. How tenderly he held them, feather-light. Even in the hospital, even when she could feel nothing at all, he had cradled her innocent fingers, never once tightening his grip as sobs racked his body.

_She’s so cold, Carol._

His eyes had gaped up at her, disbelieving, his head shaking just slightly as he pressed a thumb to her lifeless palm again.

_Is she sick? Why’s she so cold?_

Rindy. His Rindy, feverish and shivering in her last moments, as warm as they both loved her for being. The irony still sliced, and ached, and _burned._ She’d had to leave the hospital room then, impossible as it was to watch Harge ask again and again if Rindy was supposed to be that cold. _She’s not ill, she can’t be, we take such good care of her._ And the way he’d smiled, as lovingly as if she was sitting in front of him, as warmly as if he’d been telling the doctor about a little girl who was alive. _She’s such an amazing girl. You should meet her, really._ When had it finally set in that she was dead? That nobody would be able to meet her, ever again? Carol couldn’t remember the exact moment, but she remembered the scream that had emptied him, Harge, her best friend, guttural and aching and not human at all.

Carol pawed at her cheeks, now, pressing the balls of her hands into her eyes to stop the tears from falling. What a privileged life she’d lived, up until then — a fully fledged adult, and this was the first taste of reality she’d had to face. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things was another that waited to tear the world in two.

Releasing her palms from her eyelids, she gathered herself for a moment as the black spots faded from her vision, fuzziness slipping away like a tide. She couldn’t bear to look at the house anymore — at the memories. Her head turned towards the view again, and she would not look away. She couldn’t. She couldn’t.

She stared until her vision blurred, until it was barely possible to tell the difference between the distant city lights and the vague reflection of the warmth which spilled through the cracks in the doors of her own house, face mirrored in the vastness of the glass that she watched out from. A wandering thought, slipping into the bed that her mind had made — would Therese be awake, too?

_(Would Therese be thinking about her, too?)_

And far into the humming nest that New York had become to her, Therese sat, her fingers tracing a small, trembling heart into the condensation that her breath had left on her window. _Carol_ , she thought, as she drew a line through the fading illustration. _Carol_ , over and over again. The name was a maze, and she revelled in the way she could lose herself in it, every time. _Carol_ , until her eyes burned shut and her sleeping figure fell against the glass, forehead pressing into the faint smudge where her heart had been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. *gestures vaguely at laptop screen* here’s 3300 words that I wrote on a whim. If you couldn’t tell, Therese is in denial. More about that later. Some questions answered, and maybe a few more that now need answering? Anyway, trauma breeds trauma so be prepared for all that lies ahead. Comments mean the world to me — I am so sorry that I haven’t responded to the last few, but I promise I will get around to it! Also, I swear we’ll have more scenes with Carol and Therese actually interacting, soon — Christmas is coming, on their timeline, so prepare for a number of fluffy chapters after this one ;)
> 
> — prestonsarchives <3
> 
> (PPS, please don’t hate Dannie too much. I’m trying not to write him as a complete dick, but it’s hard to find the balance — just keep in mind that he almost lost his best friend, and he can’t do anything but put the blame on himself as of yet. Until next time, and if I haven’t updated within a month, prod me in the ribs (virtually, however that may be done) and I’ll try and… write, I suppose. Stay safe, everyone.)


	10. Aware

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ladies — I feel like I should be the first to say that this chapter is not one of a predicted continuum. I say this, as in — I'm not returning, so much as posting as a one-off thing in honour what I like to call 'Carol season' (the whole month of December, essentially.) The likelihood is that I'll see you all some months into 2021, so until then, cheers to what we can only hope will be a better year.

* * *

_Aware (Japanese) — the bittersweetness of a brief and fading moment of transcendental beauty._

* * *

Carol _hated_ telemarketers. Everyone did, she knew — now more than ever though, there was this unfamiliar almost- _rage_ that filled her every time her screen lit up, and it wasn’t Therese. Therese, who she knew would have been there for her last night as she sobbed. Therese, who had somehow managed to uproot _everything_ in the twenty-one days (three weeks exactly, now, and the thought was strange) that they had known each other. It was adolescent, the time that it took the next idea to crash into her peripheral.

_Why don’t I just call her?_

She found the contact in her phone — _Therese (bookshop) —_ thumbing in a new name in replacement of what struck her now as the details of an acquaintance, rather than the friend that Therese was showing herself to be. _Friend._ It was an easy lie. With a breath, Carol pressed the pad of her finger into the call button. A new contact, as her phone now rang. _Therese <3\. _A platonic heart, she told herself — and a lie again.

“Hello?”

Therese’s voice.

“Therese, hey—”

“Carol! I missed you, hi.”

 _I missed you._ Carol could hear the smile in the words, could almost see the dimples etched into Therese’s cheeks. Her heart ran through with warmth, her mind whirled. _I missed you too._

“You’re certainly excited for a Tuesday.”

What was a Tuesday, anymore? December was a month of deceptively short days, hours twisting into each other in a fashion that may as well have rendered today a Saturday.

“Maybe — is it Tuesday? — but apparently there’s snow forecasted, later.”  
  
Bloody Tuesdays. The word was beginning to sound foreign in Carol’s head, but before her mind was allowed a chance to wring it through until the syllables shrivelled into themselves, the second part of Therese’s sentence rose up off its haunches.

“Later as in… _today,_ later?”  
  
Thirty-five, and the idea of snow still exhilarated her as much as if she’d been a child faced with the prospect of missing a day of school.  
  
“Today, later. I didn’t know if we’d get any this year at all.”

 _Snow._ Butterflies? The excitement twirled across the miles between them, and Therese was almost breathless.

“Just before Christmas, too. We haven’t had a white Christmas in…”

Carol paused to count the years on her fingers. Did she even dare to think back to dates before this?  
  
“—four years, I think.”  
  
Therese finished her sentence — unexpectedly — but her voice was flat, this time, and Carol could imagine walking over to the window and watching the words tripping and stilling on the gravel below.

“Not a fan?”  
  
The question could have been phrased better, in terms of context, but Therese seemed to understand, as she always did.

“Of Christmas? No. Not— not really. It’s strange.”  
  
Carol waited for Therese to continue.

“Strange?”

A prompt.

“Sort of. God, I’m really not good at this, am I? People are supposed to be excited in the run-up.”

It was laughter that Carol let loose down the line now, the sentiment bizarre. Christmas, past adulthood, had become less of a festivity and more of an event to plan, a budget blown, an argument tossed. Always the uncles, too, starting rows at the family dinner. She looked forward to it less and less each year, and while there wasn’t necessarily anything particularly negative about the holiday season, there simply wasn’t enough will in her heart to be overjoyed about it.

“They are?”

Solidarity. It wasn’t new, but there was a developing fondness for things that both women had in common, as rare as they seemed to be. A garden, cultivated by the two.

“Maybe not, then. Christmas is fun and all — turkey, presents, the lot — but I’m usually alone. Which, you know, kind of defeats the point of the turkey, and the presents.”

The admission was quieter, more stilted than before, and Carol could have sketched parenthesis around the parts of the sentence that Therese was using as a method to stall. She waited, again. It was strange, these weak little facts that she was able to grasp hold of during their increasingly frequent calls, knotting them together with the rest of the portfolio she seemed to be building of the brunette. Silence, and then some more.

“Dannie usually goes off, to his Mama’s house — this huge great family gathering, and he invites me every year, but I just don’t really fare well with those kinds of things. That… magnitude.”  
  
The idea of a family at all was what _truly_ daunted Therese, although she held the fact back, that stereotypical extended Christmas which she’d only ever read about in Enid Blyton books. Family. The idea that a family could be so _loving,_ so unconditionally, was ridiculously foreign to her. As was Christmas. Thus; she cowered.

“And parties?”  
  
Therese was slightly miffed that Carol thought of her as the partying type, considering all the evidence she’d made sure to stack against that idea. Books, tea, quietude, calm.

“Oh, no. You’d never find me at one of those. Not to be a snob, or anything, I just…”

She didn’t finish the sentence — she didn’t _need_ to finish the sentence, for Carol to understand. Just. Just existence. Just truth.

“You’re not a snob at all. I’ll be alone too, this year.”

And the next. And probably the next after that. There was a quietly dawning silence that stretched out between the two women, pulling taut in an attempt to wrap itself around the elephant in the room. Two people, both alone at Christmas, on the phone _to each other_ as the revelations were thrown across enemy lines. _What if we spend the day together?_ Neither dared to say it, but the idea was there. It sat, a lake, between them.

“What if…”

Therese stilled. Carol couldn’t even hear her breaths coming down the line.

“Would you want to come and pick out a tree with me?”  
  
A smile. Invisible, audible. The blonde grinned back as if the brunette could see — the question asked wasn’t _exactly_ the fish they’d both been lining for, but it was a start. A minnow in the search for a shark. Either way, the ball had been set rolling, and the undertone of the ask spoke volumes more.

“You haven’t got a tree yet?”  
  
Incredulous half-laughter on Therese’s part — even _she’d_ managed to find a tree. Its needles littered her already-cluttered living room floor, and their apartment reeked of pine to such an extent that air freshener companies would have been jealous, but it was there, and decorated, and the one reminder she had, that she had anything at all. Decorated with cracked candy canes and baubles she’d scraped off the shelves at a last minute sale, certainly, but it was there. It sat, leaked needles and scent, and spoke tales of Christmas she’d never heard before.

“Do you think there’ll be any left?”  
  
Silence, now, and all that remained was for Therese to answer the _original_ question.

“Yes. Definitely. We might have to hurry, though.”

 _Yes. Definitely._ Carol breathed in, and the world sat back. It had done its job.

“I’ll pick you up at ten?”  
  
Half an hour. Therese bit back another smile — she was seeing Carol again, and this soon.

“Perfect. See you then.”

The call ended, and both women clutched their respective phones to their chests, grinning like gods at the dawning of the world. This, the dawning of _their_ world. Snow, and Carol, and Therese, and joy that thus diffused into the air like the smell of pine in Therese’s flat. _The smell of Christmas,_ she thought now. It had never really struck her like this, before.

* * *

After ten too-long minutes worth of trying to pick an outfit, Therese had settled on something that looked vaguely Christmassy enough — a grey knit sweater that looked strikingly like the one Carol had been wearing the other week, black jeans and heeled boots that lifted her up another few inches from where she ordinarily stood. Tiny reindeer earrings that she’d picked up from some car boot sale a few years ago — and never worn, until now — dangled from her ears, their noses glinting red in her peripheral vision. The weather app on her mobile hadn’t changed but to forecast the likelihood of snow as 80% rather than the previous 60%, and just as she made a move to text Carol an update, a horn sounded outside. She started, peering down from her third floor window and catching a flash of blonde as a car door opened. It was, unmistakably, Carol — the way she walked, almost swaying, her posture, her nails (which were so bright a red that Therese could see them even from this far up) — and for the second time in just as many days, the younger woman pressed herself into the glass of her window, aching to see more.

The intercom buzzed, and Therese skittered across the apartment, her hands shaking with the energy of a thousand stars. _Play it cool._ As _if_ she could ever play it cool around Carol.

“Hello?”

“Therese.”

Even through the rusty audio that the intercom allowed, her name on Carol’s lips was enough to silence Therese for the few seconds that passed.

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

With a last spritz of the perfume she’d been given as a birthday present from a university friend — three years ago, because the bottle was nice enough that she couldn’t afford to buy a new one and she was decidedly fond of this scent — Therese tugged open the door, scrawling a note for Dannie that started and ended with some variant of _see you after Christmas, I’ll be okay._ All she could hope for was anything but a repeat of last week.

She avoided the lift down — it stank perpetually of weed, and she’d rather not let that be the first thing Carol noticed about her — darting out of the stairwell at the bottom with the sound of her heels on the floor echoing behind her. A Tesla — because of course Carol had a Tesla — sat outside, gleaming cherry red against the black of its furnishings. The windows were tinted, but Therese could still see the faint outline of Carol inside, a manicured finger tapping against the steering wheel.  
  
The older woman looked up as Therese tugged open the door, eyes creasing into a smile as she hopped in.

“Loving the earrings.”

Therese grinned back, her breaths condensing in the winter air until she pulled the door back shut behind her.

“Loving the nail polish.”  
  
A verbal tennis game already, called to a halt almost immediately as Carol rested a hand on Therese’s thigh, squeezing once — _platonically_ — watching out of the very corner of her eye as Therese stiffened into the cream leather of the seats. The sun flooded in through the car’s ridiculously huge windscreen onto Carol — her hair was a warm gold, today, each strand so lustrous it seemed lit from within.

“I missed you.”  
  
Carol smirked.

“So you’ve said.”

A pause, and just before she moved to type directions into the SatNav—

“I missed you too.”

The drive to the tree lot was quiet, clouds swamping the sky with their promise of snow. Every so often Therese would steal a glance at Carol, at the way her hands grazed the steering wheel, the shift in her posture every time she pressed further down on the gas. Her moderate stillness versus the blur of the world as they both drove by; a battle Therese would watch through eternities should there be no victor.

“See something you like?”  
  
Therese grinned sheepishly, drawing her gaze back up to meet Carol’s eyes though they had already flickered back onto the road. _Yes._ If she’d been a different person, the word would have tumbled from her lips.

“I barely get out of the city. This side of New York — it’s nice.”  
  
Half a lie, but Carol seemed to entertain it well enough. They pulled off the highway into a stretch of greenery Therese had never thought much of in the few times she’d driven past it, grinning as they passed an aged red sign — _Gopher Broke Farm._ A significantly half-arsed Christmas tree was scrawled under the white font, and this place was so off-the-beaten-track that Carol could only know it through past experience.

“You’ve been here before?”  
  
A sad smile touched the edge of the older woman’s cheeks, hidden as quickly as the sun behind the clouds above.

“With Rindy. And Harge — it was his tradition.”  
  
Silence, and regret on Therese’s part. _I’m sorry,_ she would have said, had she not the faint memory of Carol expressing just how much she hated hearing those words. There was a look on her face that spoke of expecting the exact phrase — a sort of ready stillness, like a martial artist before a fight — and it brightened when Therese veered away from the pity she so despised.

“Now it’s yours.”

Dappled sunlight filtered through the windscreen onto Carol’s teeth as she grinned, though the clouds were so heavy now that they had no texture, no steady roll, just weight.

“Now it’s mine.”

 _Ours?_ The word caught itself before either woman spoke it, before either woman could even begin to entertain the idea that there would be more Christmases, together, than this. It slipped itself under their tongues like a razor blade — just as hidden, just as dangerous.

“Carol?”  
  
The name was treated with delicacy, as it always was, and the car pulled to a stop past the electric gate which had dragged itself along the ground. _Carol._ Rolling from the very back of her mouth right to the front where the ‘L’ dropped out, the syllables were lifted up just slightly at the end in a question.

“Yes?”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Silence, again, and this time a vaguely bemused shift in countenance on Carol’s behalf.

“For driving you out here? Please — you’re the one who agreed to spend the day with me in the first place.”

It was casual; a casual avoidance, perhaps, of the genuine undertones of Therese’s gratitude — that wasn’t what she’d been thanking Carol for and they both knew it. Besides, the blonde had said _agreed_ as if Therese had had any say in the matter at all — she was _magnetised,_ and they both knew that, too. No part of her could ever plausibly have declined.

“Come with me?”

* * *

The joys found in the art of belated tree shopping were few and far between — _this one?_ but _too old; this one?_ but _that thing has less branches than my family tree_ (a joke on Therese’s part that she knew wouldn’t quite go through to Carol and her abundant family, all those cousins twice-removed that someone would likely be in charge of keeping track of) — before Carol stopped at a tree that was very, very nearly perfect. Enough branches that the trunk wasn’t visible, foliage tinted a rich green, fewer needles littered around it — and the list went on, but—

“Please tell me you’re aware that this tree is smaller than me.”  
  
Therese stood obstinately by it, the tip barely stretching past the shoulders of her 5’4” frame. Carol gestured at the tree behind them, tall in the way that an eleven year old boy entertaining an early growth spurt was tall — gangly, patchy, all angles and general disproportionality.

“There’s always… this one?”  
  
A telling sweep through the heap of pine needles which had gathered in mountains beside the trunk said enough, and both turned back to the dwarfed tree in front of them. Carol laughed, briefly, a giving snort that she was quick to cover up with her left hand. Therese looked up at her, and then again — quickly — back down. There was an emotion in her gaze she couldn’t yet let Carol see.

“Can you run back and grab my purse? It’s in the glove compartment, I think.”

Therese turned to walk back to the car as Carol waved over the Christmas tree salesman, her sheepskin gloves catching the light with her hair. The Tesla was still unlocked and the brunette leaned in, fishing around for the wallet in amongst countless safety pamphlets and a few unopened packets of tissues. She glanced out of the windscreen, splayed almost horizontally across the front seat, and stared. There, as should likely have been expected, was Carol. The blonde was stood laughing at something the salesman — salesboy, more like — had said, a throw-your-head-back sort of laugh that still didn’t quite reach the edges of her eyes. Still, she looked divine, and the last rays of sunlight were splayed across her shoulders, casting the rest of the world into the shadow it seemed to deserve.

The image was one she would have taken a photo of, had she owned a good enough camera to do the scene justice — yet in her mind the shutters clicked anyway, a stamp pressed into wax seal that would remain imprinted in her mind. The red of Carol’s lipstick, the green of the trees, the white of the rest of the sky — the world wanted people to know it was Christmas, it seemed. She found herself caught now in Carol’s gaze, a piercing blue to stand against all which suddenly appeared dull. Drawn across the front of the car, her eyes wide and her mouth open, Therese knew she’d been caught staring. Carol’s smile, though — Carol’s smile, which stretched across the whole expanse of her face — and suddenly, she didn’t care. _Are you done?_ The blonde mouthed it across the metres, and Therese felt the words as if they were a gust of wind. She shivered in response to it, brushing that off too and pulling herself out of the car.

“I got your purse.”

Carol’s grin stretched wider as she held out a hand for it, letting her fingers brush Therese’s as she grasped it.

“So I saw.”

She turned back to the salesboy, handing over the twenty — trees were on a discount, this late in December — and then, winking at Therese, fished out another forty dollars. It was a joking reference to their flustered first meeting, and a joy to watch the boy’s eyes gleam in the dying sunlight — still, it stung. Just a little bit. A consequential reminder to Therese, at least, of the way forty dollars meant nothing to Carol; of the way forty dollars meant way too much to herself. The tree was wrapped in netting, Carol was somewhat wrapped in that same obliviousness Therese was wondering whether or not to be wary of — and then.

“Therese!”

Her voice was threaded through with delirium, falling away as something close to a whisper — Therese was magnetised. Carol’s hand was outstretched, palm-up in the air and almost horizontal, her eyes childishly wide.

“Did you see that?”  
  
Therese shook her head, eyebrows knitting together in joyous bewilderment.

“Hold on.”

The blonde reached for Therese’s own hand, positioning it in a way that mirrored hers. It was quiet, a gust of wind, the grunts of the salesboy pushing the tree into the boot behind them, two women holding their arms out to the sky as if in divine sacrifice. A knock, and an answer. Drifting, down and down, floating and twisting and whirling in those cyclonic patterns that the wind seemed to like — a snowflake. It landed on Therese’s thumb.

_“Snow.”_

She was as breathless as Carol, now, casting her eyes up in search of the rest of the onslaught. The two women locked eyes as another flake fell between them, giving Therese the excuse to look away before the heat between them melted away the white Christmas that suddenly seemed set to come.

“God, you must be cold. Your cheeks are glowing.”  
  
Therese nodded, playing along with the idea that her face had been reddened by cold rather than blush.

“Oh, yeah — that’s my bad. Should’ve brought a jacket or something thicker than this.”

She pulled at a thread of the sweater she’d so painstakingly chosen before, realising only now the inherent idiocy of wearing a single layer through the forecasted 80% chance of snow. Carol only grinned and before Therese could stop her, was shrugging off her own coat — a dark beige trench coat, no less, something so startlingly _Carol-_ esque that the brunette had barely even noticed it — and drawing it around Therese’s shoulders. In a meek form of protest, Therese half-stepped back, her mouth already open in dissent.

“Please, you don’t have to—”

Secretly (was it so secret? Carol was instigating this, after all) the younger woman bathed in the moment; in the sudden warmth that the coat supplied, in the closeness that they were rather abruptly shifted into, in the way Carol’s perfume rolled off the coat and into the air around her as if it could be a shield from all of the world’s deceptions.

“I grew up in Illinois, Therese. Honestly, the cold barely affects me anymore.”  
  
She said the word _Illinois_ as if it were _Antarctica,_ and for a brief, useless moment, Therese couldn’t help but wonder if Carol and knew what it was to be _truly_ cold. As in — _we can’t pay for the heating this winter so you won’t be able to feel your fingers for about five months_ cold. The wealthier of the two probably only knew cold as a feeling rather than a time frame — the nip of a December morning before the fire was lit, getting into an unheated car before the sun was up, forgetting to wear gloves on a winter walk. Jealousy, and Therese hated it. _Hated_ it. Of course it wasn’t Carol’s fault that she came from a richer background. How could it be? Both of them had gone through their fair share of struggles and Therese absolutely despised the part of herself which seemed so desperate to turn this into the _oppression olympics_ no matter the cost.

“Are you sure?”  
  
Carol scoffed.

“Absolutely.”

The coat’s sleeves hung slightly over the edge of Therese’s fingers and the blonde stooped to roll them up, the fog of her condensing breaths wrapping like a scarf around the younger woman’s neck. Proximity — _this_ proximity, the way Carol only would have had to shift her lips just a few inches upwards to meet Therese’s — it ached.

“There. Fits like it was made for you.”  
  
At this point, both laughed — Therese was considerably shorter than Carol, of course, and it draped off of her like an old curtain, its tail almost dragging along the ground — but it worked, and it was warm.

“Thank you.”  
  
The second _thank you_ today. It was sincere, as things always were between them. The car journey back was quiet: the air smelled like Christmas, the coat smelled like Carol, and there was a steadily increasing rush of snow against the windshield. This felt like home.

* * *

“Here we are then.”

Carol had pulled the Tesla to a stop outside Therese’s apartment, the flow of traffic humming around them. It was almost fitting, the way that seemed to work — the rest of the world working, shifting, moving; Carol and Therese, still at the centre of it all. How the constellations would spin around these two.

“Here we are.”  
  
She made no move to get out. It was the heated seats, Therese told herself, they were just too comfortable to leave. And again:

“Here we are.”

An admission of something akin to defeat as she finally lifted a hand to pull open the door, her movement coinciding rather exactly with Carol’s next words. The blonde threw them into the air like confetti, and hoped. _Hope._ What a disastrous thing.

“You could spend Christmas with me. If you want. I mean, if you’re going to be alone, that is. Not — you don’t have to cancel plans or anything, or come at all, if you don’t want to. That’d be fine too.”

A plethora of sentences there, awkward in a way that Therese had _never_ seen Carol be. Another jigsaw piece. Another square of the map she was so desperate to one day complete. A moment — a multitude of moments — passed, brief and transcendental, so fraught with all that lay between them that for a fading few seconds, the rest of the world seemed to just slip away. Slip — fall. Shatter. It collapsed around them, the rest of their universe, the set of some foreign play crumbling to the ground to reveal all that was backstage, hidden, lost. A mask unveiled, and the only things that remained were two women in a Tesla, as stripped bare as perhaps they could ever be. Christmas, together, alone. Even _they_ couldn’t make this out to be a platonic thing.

“I don’t — um. I wouldn’t want to intrude. If you’re doing this out of courtesy, honestly, I’ll be alright.”

“Therese.”

Her voice was deep, tired, limping.

“I want you — here.”

The pause between the last two words had been just _slightly_ too long to be ignorable. _I want you_ versus _I want you here._ One wanting, one wanton. (Irrespectively.)

It was ignored. Here, as in, in general? In the Tesla? Simply by Carol’s side?

“You’re sure?”  
  
Therese, always so very wary of overstepping boundaries. _Maybe if I leaned across and kissed her, she’d know how sure I was._ The thought didn’t shock Carol so much as it thrilled her, but the urge was restrained.

“Please.”

_Please._

The world started moving around them again. The realisation came that they'd have to hurry, if they wanted to beat the snowstorm that was likely coming. If _this_ was a _they._ Everything hung in the balance, and the balance — it was Therese.

“Okay.”

The word tipped the scales, entirely.


End file.
